See Her Run

by Peggy Townsend

  “I’m not here about a car,” Aloa said.

  “OK. Goodbye,” he said, and began to close the door.

  “Wait.” Aloa shoved her boot into the space. Another reason for the sturdy Timberlands. “Please. I’m looking for someone. Samantha Foster.”

  “Gone.” The big-headed man peered down the hallway.

  “Do you know where she went?” Aloa persisted.

  “No,” the man said.

  “How about Hayley Poole? Did you know her?”

  His brown eyes scanned Aloa. “What’s the password?” he asked.

  Aloa frowned. “Sorry, I don’t have a password. I’m a reporter. I mean, a researcher.” It felt wrong to claim that title anymore. “I’m doing a story about Hayley, about how she died.” The pressure of the door against her foot lessened slightly. “I’m looking at what the police might have missed; what was left behind.”

  A big hand suddenly gripped Aloa’s arm and yanked her into the space. The door slammed behind her.

  “That’s it,” the man whispered. “That’s what Hayley said, that someone might come for what was left behind. I’ve been waiting and waiting.” He let go of her arm and Aloa stepped back, her body buzzing with a quick shot of adrenaline. She took in the large man, the distance to the door.

  “I knew it.” The man paced away from her. “I knew you would come.”

  Aloa ran through her options: run, fight, or play along and see what happened. She picked “play along.” The reporter who had taught her about knock-and-talks had also said the best way to deal with crazy was to step into their world. She touched the canister of pepper spray in her jacket pocket and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She said you would have it.”

  “I kept it,” the man said, and gestured toward a trash can filled with grease-stained rags. “Can you stand over there, please?”

  “Sure,” Aloa said, and watched the man make big Zorro-like slashes in front of the door.

  “Auric barrier,” he explained. “Nothing can penetrate.”

  “Good thinking,” Aloa said.

  He moved across the room with a limping gait and began unloading boxes of car parts and supplies onto the floor from a large metal case. Aloa kept one eye on him while she took in her surroundings. An older model Volvo with a raised hood was parked in the middle of an immaculate concrete floor. Tools hung from labeled hooks. A crisply made bed was tucked neatly into a corner with a small counter that contained a toaster oven and a sink next to it. Nearby was a blue motorcycle polished to a high sheen.

  “So you and Hayley were friends?” she asked.

  The man stopped. “She said it was OK. She loved Ethan best but she said I could be second.”

  Aloa heard the defensiveness in his voice. “I’m sure you were a good friend,” she assured him quickly.

  “I helped her all the time,” the man said, and turned back to his task. “Big things, little things. Whatever she needed, I did it. Even with them out there.”

  Aloa frowned. “With who out where?” she asked.

  “The watchers. But don’t worry.” He stopped his work and went over to a large rolling tool chest, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a foot-long knife with a sharp, serrated blade and a leather handle.

  “Jesus,” Aloa said.

  “I’ll stop them. See? Nothing to it. Six angles of attack. Move in straight lines.” For a moment, it seemed as if he was talking to the knife instead of her. “Can we keep it safe? Yes, we can. We can do it, Hayley. Roger that, I got your back. Evil things out there, Cal. But I trust you, big guy.” He shoved the weapon back into the drawer. “You’re my helper. My very good helper.”

  Omigod, thought Aloa.

  She watched him go back to work, stopping for a moment to slide a piece of cardboard under a daddy longlegs and carry it to the sliding bay door. “Hurry,” he told the arachnid before limping back to his task.

  A few minutes later, the shelves were emptied and the man heaved aside the heavy case, his one-sided conversation resuming. “I’ll fix it, Hayley,” he muttered. “Don’t be late. Socket set. Torque wrench. Finder-minder. Finder-minder.”

  He glanced over at Aloa and seemed surprised to see her there. Something came into his brown eyes. “Oh yes, she’ll know what to do. Yes, she will. Stay calm, Cal.”

  The mechanic squatted, reached into a hollow space in the wall, and pulled out a cardboard box. He stood, and Aloa rested her finger on the pepper spray’s release valve.

  What the hell was in there?

  The man moved toward her, his eyes darting like a hummingbird from her to the door and back to the hidden spot. He shoved the box into Aloa’s hands. “Take it. You’ll find what you need on Uranus. That’s what she said.”

  “On Uranus?” Aloa asked, but it was as if the mechanic didn’t hear her.

  He turned and plucked a small black device with three long wires from a nearby shelf and set it atop the box in Aloa’s arms.

  He leaned in so close that Aloa was forced to take a step back. “I took it out,” he whispered. “But who put it there? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Aloa opened her mouth to ask more, but the mechanic was already reverse-slashing his auric barrier and opening the shop door.

  He took her shoulder and moved her gently toward the opening, in almost the same way he had moved the spider. “Whatever you do, don’t let the High Priest find you. Don’t let him get you too,” he hissed.

  “Wait, what High Priest?” Aloa said. “What are you talking about?”

  Instead of answering, the mechanic pushed her into the hall and slammed the door shut. A lock turned; then there was nothing but quiet.

  “Why did Hayley want you to hide this? What’s in here?” Aloa called.

  Silence.

  “At least tell me your name,” Aloa said.

  “Calvin Leroy Rabren,” came a faint voice. “Don’t say you ever saw me.”

  Aloa smelled the mustiness in the cardboard box, shuddered, and quickly set it on the floor. Once, when she was working at the Chicago Tribune, a cardboard box had been delivered to her desk. She’d slit it open without thinking and found a rotting rat carcass crawling with maggots. From the note the police found inside, the rat was apparently a comment about a story she’d written on the city’s awarding of a garbage contract. Garbage, it turned out, was a hot topic in Chicago. After that, Aloa had had a hard time with brown cardboard boxes. Even when her mother had mailed her birthday presents, Aloa had always had someone else open the container.

  She shoved at the box with the toe of her boot and glanced at the locked metal door. Calvin might have been a mechanic, but he could stand to tighten a few loose bolts in his own head. Still, if Hayley had left something with him, there must have been some kind of trust between them.

  Aloa toed the box again, and felt the slightest gag in the back of her throat at the memory of that rotting carcass. Lunch was out. She’d planned to stop for soup at a place she knew south of Market Street. Dinner, she promised herself. Roast chicken, a green salad. She stopped herself before she could go further.

  She inhaled a breath, squatted in front of the cardboard container, and removed the device the mechanic had set on top of it. The label read DAUNTLESS M750. A car part? Some kind of electric switch? She set it aside, fished a Swiss Army knife from her pack, and slowly slit open the taped box. No sick-sweet smells. No scrabble of insects. She lifted one side of the box’s flap with a tentative finger, ready to run if needed. She peered in.

  The box was cluttered with manila folders and stacks of papers. She reached for the top one, a termination notice for health insurance. The named owner of the policy was Hayley Poole. These were her things.

  She crouched in front of the box, wondering why Hayley would ask the mechanic to protect what looked like a random assortment of bills and objects. Unless it was simply the product of the mechanic’s overactive imagination. She debated for only a few seconds before loading the box’s contents into her d
aypack. Better to check everything out.

  She found a wooden keepsake box, one of those college composition notebooks crabbed with handwriting, a couple of Topo maps. Her fingers stilled next to the last item: a cracked coffee mug that advised LET YOUR HEART SHINE.

  She hated coffee mugs with cheerful sayings.

  She zipped her pack, added the Dauntless whatever-it-was to an outside pocket, and stood, considering the mechanic behind the closed door. Sometimes sources sparked more questions than answers, and there was still plenty of work to do. She needed to find Samantha, talk to the detective on the case, and locate the missing witness at the campout. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to Uranus to do it.

  CHAPTER 7

  When in unfamiliar territory, detail is especially important, Aloa’s father had always said. Aloa knocked on the doors of 103 and 102 on her way out. No answer. Outside, she squatted against the warehouse, drank from her water bottle, and jotted Calvin Leroy Rabren’s name along with the rough facts of the visit in her notebook. She also recorded the results from the HardE app: 8,323 steps walked, 600 calories burned—and told herself to shut down the demanding piece of technology, which included messages like “All right!” if you reached your daily quota of steps and scolded you if you didn’t. “Good job,” the message read, and Aloa felt a guilty twinge of satisfaction. She stood and shoved the phone in her pocket. She would turn off the stupid app as soon as she got home.

  She had moved a few yards away from the building when a thought rose: Where was 101? She turned and counted. Seven windows near the roof’s edge but only six doors inside. She paced the length of the building, figuring the location of Calvin’s shop/home. The extra window was at the opposite end. She went back inside. No door showed the number she wanted.

  She paused, called the windows to mind, and went back to 102. She knocked more loudly this time. Nothing. She looked up and down the hallway, then twisted the doorknob. From experience, she knew not everyone believed in locks.

  The door swung open to reveal a short hallway and there, to her left, was a narrow set of wooden stairs with a sign that announced 101. Some weird remodeling job had left a misleading door. “Hello?” she called, and when there was no answer, she headed up.

  Sometimes, Aloa wondered about the transformation she underwent when she was on assignment. In regular life, she sent thank-you notes, called her elders ma’am and sir, and always brought a hostess gift to dinner parties—all traditions her Southern-born mother had drilled into her. But give her a story and she had no qualms about asking questions that might be considered rude, going through someone’s trash, or walking into what may or may not have been another person’s home.

  The stairs opened to a small living space: a galley kitchen, beat-up recliner, rumpled bed, a TV silently beaming out a baseball game. A rough-looking man with a dark mullet sat at a table scattered with papers and books.

  “Hello. Hi. Sorry to bother you,” Aloa said, although she wasn’t. She smiled—a reporter’s most effective disguise.

  The man looked up.

  “I’m looking for Samantha Foster.” Aloa stepped into the space, still smiling.

  “You and me both, honey,” said the man. “Skipped without a word. Owes me a month’s rent. Busted toilet, a dog I didn’t know about. Dog crap everywhere.”

  “You’re the . . .” Aloa let the sentence hang.

  “Property manager. Soon to be ex–property manager.” He hacked a cough, reached for a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray, and took a drag. “Some Chinese company is buying the building. Gonna turn them into start-up lofts or some nonsense. I’m waiting for the leases to expire, then gotta kick everybody out. Then they kick me out.”

  It was the kind of change that was occurring all over the city. Despite rent-control laws, landlords were finding ways to evict their middle-class tenants so the units could then rent for exorbitant rates, with the consequence that some people were living like Harry Potter in places hardly bigger than a closet under the stairs.

  “And you are?” the manager asked.

  Out of habit, Aloa started to say reporter but stopped herself again. “I’m a researcher,” she said.

  “Like a detective?” The man blew a funnel of smoke from the side of his mouth.

  “I’m doing an investigation for a journalism website,” Aloa said. “They’re thinking of doing a story about Hayley Poole. As I understand it, she lived here for a while.”

  “Suicide, right?” the man said.

  “That’s what the police reports said.”

  “Too bad. Nice girl. Can’t say the same for that Foster gal. She fought with everybody. Took in strays just to have somebody to argue with, I think.”

  “Was Hayley a stray?”

  “Started out that way. She and her boyfriend . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Ethan something. Rock climber. Anyway, they lived with that Foster bitch for a year or so. He died and Hayley lost it. She was getting better, happier, you know. Then Foster kicked her out, or maybe Hayley got tired of living with that big mouth.” He shook his head. “A few weeks later, Foster rabbits on me.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Say, you’re not working with that other dude, are you? Some guy came in asking the same thing.” The man ground out the cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Somebody else was looking for Samantha?” Aloa’s radar pinged.

  “Big guy. Lotta muscles. Showed up all hot right after she left, wanting her info.”

  “Did you give it to him?”

  “I didn’t like his type.”

  “What type was that?”

  “All high and mighty. Like his business don’t stink or something. Did I tell you about the dog poop I found all over her place?”

  “You did.”

  “She left most of her stuff behind too. Junk. All of it. Put it in the dumpster out back.”

  Aloa plastered a smile back on her face. “Would it be all right if I got a copy of Samantha’s rental application? Maybe I could track her down for you?” Playing the good guy to the Big Bad Dude whose business didn’t stink.

  “That’s right. Investigators got tricks, right?”

  “We do,” Aloa agreed, although her tricks were few and simple.

  “Although I ain’t exactly sure where the application is.” The man hesitated.

  “How about a pair of twenties for your trouble?” Aloa thought of Michael and his promise of expenses.

  “That’ll work,” the man said. He got up, tugged open the top drawer of a metal filing cabinet, and began rifling through it.

  “You know anything about the guy in 107? Calvin?” Aloa asked.

  “Ol’ Cal? Cuckoo but harmless. Needs to get out more, you ask me. Helluva mechanic, though.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to her. “Here it is. You find her, you call me, you hear?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Aloa stopped at a Starbucks and ordered a venti Caffè Americano. Tiredness pressed around the edges of her body, but she couldn’t eat yet. The sensory image of the cardboard box was still with her. She sipped the hot brew, waiting for the caffeine to kick in, then pulled a stack of Hayley’s papers from her pack. Might as well find out exactly what Calvin was trying to protect.

  She began to sort through the papers while, at the next table, a man in a shirt and tie argued loudly with someone on his cell phone. “I told you about the vet appointment this morning. Are you deaf or just an idiot?” he said.

  Aloa tried to ignore him.

  It wasn’t long before her cup was empty and the papers revealed a portrait of a young woman for whom the poverty line was an aspiration. Hayley had apparently worked a couple of waitressing jobs with W2 forms that showed she’d earned $4,330 and $5,239 in each of the last two years plus about $5,000 in sponsor money. A month before her death, she’d also received $550 from some Canadian annuity. From the statement the company sent, it looked like it was to be a monthly sum.

  Aloa wrote, “Annuity. Sou
rce?” in her notebook and drew a rectangle around it to mark its importance as a question. How had someone with Hayley’s limited means gotten her hands on an annuity that paid that kind of dividend?

  The man next to her was now loudly telling someone that the heater in his car was acting up and that, with what he’d paid for it, he expected it to be fixed. Immediately. Aloa wondered how much caffeine the man had consumed that morning. Like bartenders, baristas should be able to cut people off.

  From the papers, it also appeared Hayley carried a good chunk of debt. She owed $2,000 to a hospital in Colorado for a broken wrist that had been treated in the ER, $300 to a neighborhood gym, and $4,000 on a Visa card. In addition, she had gotten four parking tickets she hadn’t paid.

  Hayley also had completed a backcountry-medicine course, had graduated from high school (Aloa found her diploma), wrote terrible poetry, and had attempted to pitch a book about her life in the wilderness to a dozen literary agents. “Done to death,” one had written in the rejection note Hayley had printed out. Aloa shivered mentally at the prescience of those three words and skimmed the first ten pages of the manuscript as the overcaffeinated man got up and strode out the door, telling an entirely new caller about a hot girl he’d met at a bar the night before.

  Hayley’s story opened with her being stalked by a mountain lion on a portion of the John Muir trail. It was an incident written with a kind of Hitchcockian suspense and seemed to have some skill behind it. Aloa remembered the bad poems and wondered if Hayley’d had help writing it.

  Finished with the papers, Aloa turned to the composition book, which appeared to be some kind of workout diary. There were notations of miles run, times logged, weather conditions, and comments about her life and health.

  “Twelve miles, 82:10, Mount Tam, back felt better today,” read the first entry. The notation was followed by: “Missing Ethan so much I can hardly stand it. Know I have to stay strong. Remember: fall seven times, get up eight.”

  Aloa knew loss wasn’t something that could be overcome by aphorisms, yet there Hayley was, trying hard to pull herself out of her grief. It had been almost two decades since Aloa’s father’s death and there were still times when the loss made her world go dark. Aloa closed the book. She would spend time with it later.