by Cole Alpaugh
The Iranians simply wanted mayhem and death.
Chapter 20
Masters ski racing began a late season swing at East Coast resorts—four consecutive weekends in Vermont. Chase skipped the first two, spending ten days at home, the longest stretch since November. He’d gone to his daughter’s races instead, joining the throng of noisy parents lining the slopes and ringing cow bells. Mitra stood at his side with the video camera. Tylea wore a bubblegum pink speed suit, and he was sure he could see her smiling as she conquered the tricky flush gates and icy headwalls.
“Go, go, go,” he shouted, heart in his throat until she was safely in the finish corral.
Then Chase packed and headed for Vermont. Three days at Killington, then a final weekend up the road at Sugarbush. After arriving at his hotel Friday evening, he’d been trying to reach Mitra, getting only the machine. He wondered if she might be on the road with Tylea for a surprise visit, but knew that was unlikely. Both Mitra’s Saturday library volunteers had called out, and his daughter wouldn’t want to miss ski team practice even to come see her dad race. He didn’t mind her priorities one bit. It would soon be spring and time for soccer.
Chase skipped the late dinner and drinks with other racers. He waited by the phone, calling every twenty minutes and getting nothing but Tylea’s recorded voice. By midnight he knew something was terribly wrong. He sat in the padded vinyl chair, elbows propped on the round table of the musty room.
Chase gave up, grabbed his ski jacket, headed downstairs to his Jeep in the frigid air. His tank was full and he had every intention of driving through the night, pulling into their driveway as the sun was coming up. He detoured instead, driving to Bernie’s townhouse rental through a steady snowfall. Parked in a recently plowed space was Mitra’s little red car with Pennsylvania plates and its “I Love Libraries” bumper sticker. Somehow he’d known it would be in that exact spot. In the back of his mind he heard Limp’s voice asking if he could kill someone without getting all crazy.
Chase felt the blood drain out of him as his Jeep headlights washed over the back of her car, his right foot pressing down on the brake pedal, the left on the clutch. He hadn’t needed the wipers because the fluffy snowflakes simply blew off the glass. He sat there frozen, idling in the cold night, staring at the license plate, reading the letters and numbers one by one. He remembered watching Mitra attach the yellow and white bumper sticker, teasing her because it was crooked. The snow fell straight down in clumps, slowly cocooning his Jeep. He had never in his life felt more alone.
He switched off the ignition and killed the headlights. Chase reached under the driver’s seat for his gun—Hitler’s PPK—and slipped it inside his ski jacket next to a small plastic container of race wax.
Chase decided this must be the reason Bernie had disappeared for five days last month, passing up bigger Masters events in the Rockies. Chase’s cover had been blown and Bernie had done what all spy agencies had been doing since the beginning of spying: he’d gone for the loved ones, the family. But instead of kidnapping or killing, Bernie had attacked with his best weapon, his strong point.
Chase slipped on his calfskin gloves, pushed open the Jeep door and stepped out into the icy air. The townhomes were all dark, too expensive for the college partiers. Killington had dozens of neighborhoods of townhouses spread across its hills and valleys. Each group of two hundred or so homes formed a maze of entryways and stacks of protected firewood. The complexes were designed to create the appearance of privacy. White exteriors matched the white interiors. Floor plans were mostly the same, depending on the number of bedrooms, but Chase knew where he’d find Bernie this time of night, knew where he’d take Mitra.
Chase forced himself to slow down and be deliberate, not to break into a jog. Resch’s front door was locked, so he popped out a single pane of the closest window with his elbow, just above the locking mechanism. The window slid up smoothly and he stepped over the low threshold.
Depeche Mode blasting from the living room stereo had covered the sound of breaking glass. He allowed his eyes to adjust, taking in the dark room. The final glowing embers in the fireplace provided most of the light. The disheveled blanket in front of the brass-trimmed hearth was where they had screwed the first time. Chase had listened to enough of Bernie’s stories to know how he worked. He got their attention with his accent and his swagger. Bernie had explained that the key to seduction was the art of the balancing act. You had to appear as though whatever might happen didn’t matter, while making her feel more desired than anyone else in the world. It was a skill not easily mastered, according to Bernie, but once perfected, deadly.
And now Bernie was about to be dead.
A used condom, like some piece of gore from a gutted trout, screamed at Chase from the stones in front of the fireplace. Along with a hunk of yellow cheese and a few red grapes, it lay crumpled on a plate left on the hearth, the firelight reflecting off its latex skin. His heart raced and raced.
Chase knew everything. He could hear Bernie’s voice telling the story of how he had manipulated a lonely wife who had come to one of the races here in Vermont. The super fast racer with the exotic accent set the hook with a single unexpected compliment. After the nightly awards ceremony, in which he’d accepted the first place trophy—a little boyishly embarrassed by all the over-the-top praise from the announcer—he’d catch her eye and smile in a way that made her flushed and curious. He’d hold her gaze for an extra second or two. It was always the same when it came to wives and girlfriends.
Bernie would make sure these women knew that their secret was absolutely safe, despite his reputation. He’d come up behind them a little later and gently touch their waists in a non-threatening way. That was the first touch. And the fact that it lasted only a moment and was quickly withdrawn built some measure of trust. It let the wife or girlfriend know he was aware of a boundary to be respected in public. Then Bernie would pick a time to lean close in a friendly, playful way and say how much he wanted to make love to her—just one time.
“I knew I must do it since I first saw your beautiful eyes,” he’d say in a low voice, milking his Austrian accent. “Don’t say no right away.”
They rarely said no. Mitra hadn’t.
Chase looked up from the plate full of evidence toward a light glowing down the second floor hallway. He was drawn to the short flight of wide oak stairs and took slow, deliberate steps toward the master suite’s open doorway. As each step brought him closer, he was able to see the bed, lit bright as a movie set, with disheveled silk sheets and a twisted down comforter in the middle. His heart pounded as he recognized his wife’s soft black hair. Her legs were entwined in the sheets, naked, almost the same ivory color as the silky fabric. He couldn’t hear what she was saying because of the music, but she laughed and raised herself up on her elbows, looking toward the far corner of the bedroom. She was so happy in that instant. He couldn’t hear words, but he could hear the laughter.
The last inch or two of a candlestick flickered in the bright room. As he crept closer—within a few feet of the open bedroom door—he could see Bernie, a towel wrapped around his waist, using a second one to dry his hair and upper body.
Hot tears bubbled to the surface, but there was too much pressure. He wouldn’t have been able to let a word escape, let alone tears. The music was swallowed in that unbearable pressure, like diving down into the deepest end of a pool. His temples throbbed, about to explode.
Chase stood watching a silent movie scene and was surprised when he noticed the gun extended in front of him. It was his gun and his hand and arm. And then he realized it was aimed at Bernie’s naked chest. The PPK was smooth and hard, and still cold in his palm after being stored in his frigid Jeep. His focus went from the center of Bernie’s chest back to the two small sighting nubs at each end of the sliding barrel.
Bernie stood at the far side of the large bed and let the towel slowly slip from around his waist to expose his flaccid penis to Mitra. He had a hair
brush in his right hand and reached up to run it across his head as Chase’s aim moved with it. Chase picked a spot directly in the center of Bernie’s forehead.
He pulled the trigger.
Chase didn’t hear the shot, but a tiny wisp of smoke escaped the un-silenced barrel and momentarily blurred his view. Then he saw a small dark spot appear in the middle of Bernie’s forehead, and time and sound suddenly returned to normal. Bernie’s head snapped back and hit the wall as if he’d been punched in the nose. His body slid to the left and down to the floor, creating a giant bloody comma on white paint.
Not in a million years could Chase have predicted what happened next, after Mitra turned to look back over her shoulder to see him lowering the smoking gun.
“We’ll have to clean this up,” she told him in a matter of fact tone, swinging her legs off the bed and looking to find her shoes. “I’ll tell you everything that happened and why, but not right now.”
“What are you talking about?” His voice seemed to come from far away. Red drips formed on the comma.
“Get in here and help me clean this up. Now!” Mitra shouted. “We’ll talk later.”
Chase stepped into the room. What else was he going to do? He looked down at the dead, naked Bernie and his wife rummaging the bedroom closet and then the master bathroom. She was finding towels. He hadn’t planned on cleaning up this mess. He hadn’t planned on anything.
“Think about Tylea!” Mitra threw an armload of towels down from a high shelf, the lovely muscles of her calves dancing beneath the skin. She was wearing a pair of Adidas running pants rolled up to Capri-length, and a thin, bright yellow sweater. Had he thought she was naked? Bernie had sure been naked, so he assumed she was, too, since she was on his bed, mixed up in the sheets.
Bernie’s wound was seeping dark stuff onto the hardwood floor.
“Jesus Christ, wake up!” she yelled, as he knelt down next to the body. Was she talking to him or Bernie? “You have to think about Tylea, right now. If we don’t get this cleaned up, you’ll end up in a jail cell and you’ll lose her. You got that?”
“What have you done to us?” Chase asked, not in anger. All emotion had been drained away. He hadn’t really expected committing murder to have such an odd effect. It had sapped away all his rage and passion and somehow plunged his wife into a crazy cleaning mode.
Then she slapped him across the face, hard.
“I need your help right now!” His face was numb, although it should have been hot and stinging. “We need him on the bed and all the blood wiped off the floor and the wall.”
“What did you do?” He fingered his cheek.
“I hit you.” It was her calm voice, and then she smiled and almost giggled. Mitra took his face in her hands. “This isn’t what you think. I’ll explain it all later, but I didn’t have sex with him.”
“Why …” Chase started to get up, but she pushed him back down next to Bernie.
“He was crazy.” She pointed down at Bernie with her palm up. Chase watched her slender fingers. “He thought you were some kind of spy and that you were after him. He thought you were going to kill him.”
“I don’t understand? Why are you here? Where’s Tylea?”
“I came because he was going to hurt you, and she’s fine, she’s at my dad’s house.”
“But …”
“I know how it looks.” She reached down and grabbed hold of Bernie’s ankles, jerking her head in the direction of the skier’s head so that Chase would grab him from the other end. They swung his limp body onto the bed.
He knew from his drunken night in the elevator, hanging off Chase like a monkey, that Bernie was light as a feather. Plus, he was now missing a gallon of blood. Mitra began scooping up all that blood with bath towels and draping them across Bernie’s body. She had apparently set about to create a wickedly gruesome piece of art. Chase admired the stark contrast of shapes and colors.
“Did you put your gloves on before you broke in?” she asked, and he looked at his hands and started to pull off the soft gloves. “Don’t!”
“Right.” And he was the spy? “Yes, I put them on outside and didn’t touch anything at all.”
Mitra left him with Bernie and padded down the hall. He heard cabinets open and close, then bottles clanking. She returned wearing cartoonish looking yellow dishwashing gloves—which kept hands soft and sexy—and carrying a load of whiskey bottles.
“Here.” She foisted a half dozen various whiskeys at him. “Just soak the bed and the body. Leave about an inch in each bottle and put the caps back on tight.”
It was no longer Bernie? Just a body? Chase was more than fine with that. He unscrewed caps and did as he was told while Mitra emptied the remaining bottles on the body formerly known as Bernie.
“Leave all the bottles on the bed. I’ll be right back.”
“You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t here to sleep with him.”
She returned with a small brown rectangle he recognized as a fire starting brick, pulling at the plastic wrapper. The funny gloves were making it difficult.
“Do you have your keys?”
“In the Jeep,” he said.
“Okay, you leave through the front door, slow and casual, like you just had a nice little neighborly visit and are heading home. Pull your jacket collar up and if someone’s walking their dog, just say something about how cold it is, nothing memorable, no stupid jokes. I’ll be at your hotel five minutes after you. Park in the back lot and wait for me in your Jeep. Got it?”
“I’m not leaving you here,” he said with no authority whatsoever.
“You’re leaving right now if you ever want to see your child again,” she told him in a voice colder than anything outside these walls. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Try not to back into anyone’s car on the way out.”
He imagined she lit the fire starter when the sound of his Jeep faded into the night. He never asked for details. He assumed she left the lit kerosene-based brick on a paperback book. It would provide a little extra time between her exit and the raging fire, which would engulf Bernie and all the alcohol soaked bedding.
She probably anticipated having some explaining to do. How she knew Bernie was feeling threatened by Chase. But once the truth came out, he was the one who had filled their lives with lies. That Bernie was being stalked by Chase. That a pretty good chunk of their life together was grounded in one whopper of a lie, and he was actually serving their country by maintaining surveillance on Bernie. Killing him prematurely was sort of a fuckup on his part, but what assignment ever goes down without a few glitches?
Mitra turned the murder scene into a tragic accident. Depending on the extent of the fire and subsequent damage to the body that had once been Bernie, the sheriff or fire inspector up here in Vermont might request an autopsy. It probably came down to whether they noticed the bullet hole, but the little Austrian ski racer had left a two-thousand mile trail of scorned women and enough pissed-off husbands and boyfriends to keep any investigators occupied right through the summer.
Mitra and Chase made love later that night in his hotel room. They did not talk.
The phone jarred Chase out of a bad dream while the room was still dark. It was a message that the morning’s race had been cancelled. There had been a fire and one of the racers had died. They were all encouraged to meet at breakfast and talk about the rest of the weekend; they could help plan services and perhaps hold a race on Sunday in Bernie’s honor.
Chase wasn’t sure why they made love so often over the next few days. Maybe it was to replace talking. Maybe it was because they sensed some sort of end was near. And a very strange thing happened between them, as each passing moment made it easier for Chase not to tell her everything, especially since she didn’t ask. And he never pressed her on how she knew Bernie thought he was a spy out to kill him.
Escaping Vermont, her little red car followed him west through R
utland, across the state line into New York, and then due south. They wound their way down to New Jersey and across the icy Delaware into Pennsylvania, to where their little girl was waiting.
Tylea had a whole new bag full of interesting toys and stories about how each one had died. Chase listened to every word, holding her close, feeling her mom’s breath on his neck, wishing it would get warm soon.
Chapter 21
Tylea’s bare knees were scabbed from rough soccer practices and games with the bigger girls, some three grades ahead. It was the middle of soccer season and Mitra’s father insisted on celebrating his birthday by attending one of her games. Chase argued the risks of her potentially volcanic father, but Mitra had been firm.
“Grandpa eats people’s pets.” Tylea was in the back seat of Mitra’s car, Chase at the wheel, as the three made the long round trip journey to pick up Doctor Bam.
“No, he doesn’t,” Mitra said and turned to Chase with a brow-furrowed look that said she wasn’t in the mood, that she wanted today to be as normal as possible.
“Why do you think so?” Chase asked and shrugged his shoulders at his wife.
Tylea folded shut the book she’d been reading, something about vampires and good looking teenagers. “The packages in his freezer all have names written on them. Names of pets, like Princess and Buster.”
“That’s just Grandpa’s sense of humor, honey,” her mother said.
“Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else?”
“Grandpa doesn’t really think that,” Mitra interrupted, but Chase knew it was true. The man loved animals, wouldn’t hurt a fly until it dug up his prized marigolds. That’s when the gloves came off.