by L. T. Ryan
She crossed the room, stopping to place her beer on a coaster on top of the wooden coffee table. The longer I looked at the table, the more I realized it had been made from pallet boards.
She caught me admiring it. “You like it?”
“Yeah. You make it yourself?”
“Yup.”
“Neat.”
She laughed. “Yeah, neat. When’d you start talking like a Cleaver?”
“Sorry, long day.”
“So, have a seat.”
I did. Her couch was more comfortable than Sean’s expensive leather sofa. I moaned as I leaned back. My body sunk into the cushions. I wondered if I’d be able to get back up.
“You all right, old man?”
I didn’t respond.
She knelt down in front of her entertainment center. Her buttocks rested on her heels. Her tank top inched up. I saw part of the tattoo again. I wondered what it looked like in its entirety. I heard a loading tray open, then close. A bossa nova beat commenced a few seconds later. A guitar and tenor sax combined to create a tune I hadn’t heard in years. Perhaps I had, but not in this way.
April rose, spun halfway, and approached with a smile on her face. “You remember?”
I took a second. A man sung in Portuguese. A smoky sax accompanied him. “Girl from…?”
She nodded, slowly.
“Some beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?”
She shook her head, quickly. “Really, Jack? That’s the best you can do?”
“Ipanema, right?”
April rolled her eyes. “About time. Now, do you remember?”
I shook my head. She looked disappointed. I said, “Give me a clue.”
She took a deep breath, sat down on the coffee table in front of me, placed her forearms on her knees and leaned forward.
“The summer before you left, you watched me almost every day because my mom was gone, and my dad worked that crazy shift and didn’t get home until nine or so. You weren’t here alone all the time, but the last couple hours was always just us. I used to—”
“Put this song on and make me dance with you.”
April smiled. She reached out and grabbed my hands. She rose, tried to pull me up with her.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Not a chance.”
“You don’t want to disappoint me, do you?”
“I really don’t care.”
She pushed the coffee table back with her legs. She took a step back, pulled on my arms harder. Eventually, I relented. She laughed at first as I fumbled through the steps. Then she moved in closer. The day had taken its toll on both of us. Her scent was natural, appealing, even mixed with the beer.
Her body pressed against mine. Her lips went to my neck. For a moment, I thought I’d tell her to stop. I didn’t. She kissed my neck, my jaw, my cheek, and my lips.
She wasn’t stopping. Neither was I. My hand went to the hem of her tank top. I lifted the right side. I pulled my head back to see more of the tattoo. She blocked me with her arms. A smile crossed her lips and she lifted an eyebrow.
“Not yet.”
“When?”
She shrugged.
Then both our phones rang.
We both exhaled, loudly.
“I have to take that,” she said, stepping back.
“I should too,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my phone. I answered without checking the number, figured it was Sean.
“Jack?”
“Sasha?”
From the other side of the room, April said, “What? What do you mean he’s not there?”
“What’s that?” Sasha said.
“Nothing. My brother’s wife. What’s going on? Why are you calling? It’s well after midnight there.”
She started to answer. I cut her off.
“Hold on a sec.”
April’s voice faded to a murmur in the background. I wanted privacy, though, so I went to the back door. It was locked in three places. I managed to get them all unlatched and stepped into the backyard. A dozen mosquitoes greeted me. They dive bombed me, two or three at a time. I swatted them away.
“OK, Sasha. What’s up?”
“She got a death threat.”
Chapter 25
Death threat.
The phrase echoed through my head. A scene played out in my mind where Erin had gone to Sasha, desperate and pleading after being unable to find me. Someone had put the pieces together. They couldn’t get to me, so they threatened her and Mia.
I don’t know if it was the humidity or fear, but I broke out into a cold sweat. I swallowed back the lump in my throat.
“Who?”
“Marcia Stanton.”
My pulse dropped below one hundred. “Credible?”
“Best I can tell it is.”
“What was said?”
“The gist of it, ‘you’re dead.’”
I moved to the corner of the small backyard and leaned against the fence. This afforded me a view into April’s house. Our beer bottles stood next to each other on the coffee table. I took a moment to compose my thoughts.
This wasn’t the first time that Marcia Stanton had her life threatened. I was outside that cafe a few days ago because we knew about the threat before she did. I had to find out if that was the case this time.
“Did we intercept any intel about this like the last attempt?”
“Not a word. And we’ve been listening hard enough to hear a mouse fart.”
“Christ.” I glanced up at the sky. Clouds raced past. “You need to get a team assembled and put around her now.”
“That’s what I suggested, too.”
“OK. Sounds like you have this under control, and I wouldn’t expect any less. So, why are you on the phone with me?”
“She wants you, Jack. She said she needs you here and with her until this threat is eliminated.”
“I’m unavailable.”
I heard her take a quick breath, as if she was going to respond. She paused for a moment. “The funeral’s tomorrow, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can come back after that, right?”
“It’s not that easy, Sasha.” Something caught my attention inside. I took a step to my right. April entered the room. “There’s things here that I need to see through.”
“Like what?”
“It’s best that you don’t know.”
“I can find out,” she said. “You know that.”
“You don’t know where I am.”
“Crystal River, Florida.”
I said nothing. Location breeched. I’d be checking over my shoulder every minute now.
“Come on, you didn’t think all your records were destroyed, did you?”
The clouds overhead slowed down. Like in a traffic jam, they piled into one another. Soon the cloud would grow out of control and have nowhere to go but down.
“Give me a day, Sasha. After that, you can send someone to pick me up and I’ll come back. Keep Marcia underground tomorrow. If she insists on going out, get the best men you can find. If any of the Prime Minister’s guys are off, surround her with them.”
The back door flew open and April stepped out. She struggled to breathe.
April said, “Jack, we need to go.”
“Hold on,” I said to her.
“Brother’s wife?” Sasha said.
“Something like that,” I said.
“You’re not going to tell me who she is?” Sasha said.
“She’s the sheriff. We’re working on something.”
“Sure you are. You got a thing for women in uniform, don’t you?”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket.
April motioned frantically. “Let’s go.”
I followed her through the house, attempting to get her to tell me what was wrong. I feared for Sean and his family’s safety. My chest and gut tightened, like someone had nailed me in the solar ple
xus with a two-by-four.
I grabbed onto her bare shoulder at the front door and spun her around.
I said, “What is it?”
She said, “Craig’s not at the house.”
“Jessie’s?”
She nodded, ducked her shoulder and slipped out of my grasp.
“OK, and…?” I said.
“His car is there. The crime scene is ruined. Someone poured bleach and ammonia and hosed it all down. There’s fresh blood, too. I think it’s Craig’s.” Her bottom lip quivered. She bit it. Her eyes had grown wet. Tears slipped down her cheeks.
“Listen to me, April. Go change. You don’t need your uniform, but throw on some jeans and grab your pistol. We’re going to head over there, quickly, but calmly. We’ll figure out what’s going on. But let’s wait until we see this with our own eyes before we start making assumptions. OK?”
“OK.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
She disappeared down the dark hall. When she returned, she had on faded blue jeans. They had holes in the knees. We left the house and walked to the car, side-by-side. Our hands brushed against each other. Thunder rumbled. It sounded far away. No flash accompanied it.
We got in the car. She drove. On the way, she asked, “Who called you?”
“Lady I’m working with.”
“Everything OK?”
“Typical problems at the office,” I said. “Looks like I’ll have to return after tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Her lips went to one side of her face and she glanced at me. “Will you come back?”
I shrugged. “There’s no way I can give an honest answer to that question. I could tell you yes, but I’d be lying. I could say no, and show up a week from tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe I waited almost twenty years to see you again and it had to be like this.”
I said nothing. What could I say? I’d forgotten about her after a week of getting my butt kicked in recruit training. She’d grown up with a distorted memory of me, and built me up from that. I could tell her everything about me, everything I had done, and she’d dismiss it because in some part of her brain, she thought of me as some kind of hero.
“I’m not who you think I am,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“This image you have of me, it’s not who I am. April, I’m not a good man.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. Trust me. The best thing you can do is forget all about me.”
She shook her head. “There’s too much going on right now, Jack. Can we talk about this before you go?”
I sighed, looked out the window. Beyond the road I saw nothing but black. The gulf lay a couple hundred yards away. Crystal blue water as far as you could swim. I wanted to be out there more than I wanted to be in the car.
“Jack?”
“Sure.”
We reached Jessie’s neighborhood. Red and blue lights bounced across the sky. Craig’s cruiser was parked on the street, in front of the house, right where I’d last seen it. Another one of April’s deputies had pulled into the driveway and left his strobes running.
She slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park before coming to a complete stop. The car lurched forward and jerked back. She threw open her door and jumped out. I followed. We ran to the front of the house where her deputy waited.
“What’s going on, Skagen?” she said.
The man stepped forward. “He’s gone. No answer. Nothing. There’s a mess inside. Fresh blood in the kitchen, living room, and the garage.”
I scanned the area while the man spoke. Across the street I saw the faint glow of a cigarette behind the front window.
“Jack,” April said. “Coming in with me?”
“You go ahead. I want to check something out.”
She and Skagen walked inside. I crossed the street and cut across the neighbor’s lawn to their front door. I didn’t bother with knocking. I reached for the handle, found it unlocked, and pushed it open.
The guy dropped his cigarette and hurried backward to the wall.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“What’d you see?” I said.
“Huh?”
Every time I’d been there, the guy had been watching, whether from the porch, or inside. He saw what happened to Craig.
“That’s a nasty habit you got there,” I said.
“So,” he said.
“It’ll kill you.”
He said nothing.
I walked toward him, stepped on the cigarette and put it out. The man’s breathing grew wheezy. I reached behind my back and pulled out the M40.
“When I say kill you, I don’t mean in the sense of heart disease and lung cancer. I mean it’ll get you noticed by the wrong person at the wrong time.”
“Don’t shoot me, man.”
His dark eyes focused on the M40’s barrel. He sucked in breath and blew it out in under a second. I caught the odor of whiskey. The guy was frail, his hair was gray and thin. He hadn’t shaved in a week or two. Long lonely hairs poked out from his open shirt.
“Where’s the other person?”
“What? Who?”
“Don’t screw with me, man. I saw someone on the porch with you earlier.”
“She…she’s in bed.”
“If you’re lying, she’s dead.”
“I’m not lying,” he said.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“Get that gun out of my face.” He whispered the words.
I took a step back and lowered my weapon.
The guy took a few deep breaths. He patted his chest a few times. “OK, after you and the woman left earlier, this black guy, he came walking over from down the street that way.” The man extended his arm and pointed over my shoulder. “The other cop, well, he talked to him, then turned his back on him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It was as if he recognized him, or accepted him as belonging there. The cop turned and waved the guy forward.”
“OK.”
“They was inside for a while.” He pursed his lips and blew out quickly. It sounded like faint machine gun fire. “I started to get bored. Figured I might come in and watch some television. Gotta be a game on, at least. Right?”
“Of course.”
“Then I seen that black dude come running out of the house, down the street again. He pulled back up a couple seconds later in a beat up little car.”
“What kind of car?”
The guy shrugged.
“Maybe like an old Toyota?” I said.
“Could’ve been,” he said.
“You get the color of it?”
The guy shook his head and tapped his nose. “Maybe gray.”
“OK.”
“Anyway,” he said. “He gets out, pops the trunk, opens the garage, and then puts the cop in the trunk.”
I waited a beat. “Did you call the police?”
The guy shook his head. “No, sir. I didn’t know who else might have been out there. I’ve been called a snitch before. Been beaten ‘cause of it, man.”
“What’s your name?”
The guy said nothing.
“We can get it through other means.”
He looked toward the window. “Your girlfriend’s out there.”
“Your name,” I said.
“Fults,” he said. “Herman Fults, with an ess, not a zee.”
“Don’t make any plans to leave town, Herman.”
He nodded. “That all?”
“No, I’ve got one more question.”
“Can I get a drink first?” He turned and walked toward the kitchen without waiting for my response. “Come on, man.”
I followed him. He grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey, tossed the cap and started drinking.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I sat across from him. My seat felt unsteady, and the table wobbled.
“You want to know what happened to Ms. Jess, don’t you?”
&
nbsp; I nodded. “Did you see?”
Under the kitchen light, he looked like a different man. Not in a good way, either. The man in the living room was old and frail. This looked like that guy’s deceased father. Deep lines were etched into his face. What hair he had looked brittle. His skin was gray, and his eyes were glazed over and milky.
“She was home with her husband. The kids was out. I was watching the game. Heard a loud engine pull up, so I got up and went to the window, cracked it and had a smoke. Two big guys got out and went right inside the house.”
“Had you seen them before?”
“Tubby and Tubby Jr.? Oh, sure. They were over a lot. Ms. Jess told me she hated them. One was her husband’s brother.”
I said nothing.
“So, anyway, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I went back to my game. Fell asleep. My front door was open, just the screen there. Windows, too. Nice breeze that night blew directly into my house. And then, two explosions woke me up.”
I straightened up.
“What time did that happen?”
He looked up. “Maybe around one or two.”
“How long between the explosions?”
“Not long. Couple of seconds.”
“What happened next?”
“Well, I ran to the window. Nearly did myself in, that time. Couldn’t breathe for a minute.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Not a thing, man. The car was gone.” He took a minute, sighed a couple times. “I went over there. The front door was unlocked. I pushed it open and saw her.” His eyes watered over. He tried to speak again, but couldn’t.
“OK, Mr. Fults. I got it. I’m going to have someone come by tomorrow and get a statement from you.”
“Can I do it after the funeral?”
“I’ll talk to the sheriff.”
We sat there for a few minutes. Neither of us looked at the other. I rose, excused myself, went through the front door and jogged across the street. April stood in front of her cruiser.
“Jesus, Jack. It’s a mess in there. This doesn’t look good.” She kept her composure.
“Yeah, well, you gotta hear the story the old man across the street just gave me.”
“He’s a drunk,” Skagan said.
“And he also sits on that porch or behind the front window and watches everything that goes on out here. Normally, that’s not much. But these past few days, a ton.”