Never Go Home

by L. T. Ryan

  The crowd shifted like an amoeba. Sean stepped away from the group and headed toward me. He bulldozed his way between Glenn and Jed. The latter tumbled to the side and stuck one hand in the dirt to keep from face planting.

  “Just in case you guys think about doing something stupid,” Sean said.

  Glenn held his hands out in front of him. Reason escaped his mouth. “Jack, this is my wife’s funeral. Why are you doing this?”

  “You know why, Glenn. We know what you did.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

  “I’ve got a witness that puts you and your fat goons at the house the night Jessie died. He heard two shots. They woke him up. When he got to the window, you’d already taken off.”

  Glenn shook his head. “Nah, man. We were gone two hours before they figured it happened.”

  I stepped forward. “Yeah, where were you then? You got someone who can back it up besides these idiots?”

  Glenn said nothing. Jed looked at him, lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. Glenn shook his head. Matt was still on the ground, on all fours. He’d got his wind back, but his face was still dark red.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “You got nothing, because the only thing you were doing was putting distance between yourself and the murder scene.”

  A murmur rose from the crowd.

  “I didn’t kill her, Jack.” Glenn threw up his hands and turned around.

  “Just tell him,” Jed said.

  Glenn took a deep breath. He turned around. His left hand was on his hip. The right covered his eyes. When he spoke, it was slightly louder than a whistle.

  “We were at my girlfriend’s house, OK? She had a couple of her cousins there, up from Tampa, for these two numb nuts. She’s got…” He dropped his head back and shook it. “Christ, how do I say this? She’s got video, man. It’s all timestamped, too. But the contents of it can’t get out.”

  I held up a hand. I didn’t need to hear anymore to know where that was going.

  “It doesn’t matter what you want,” April said. “If you want to be cleared in this investigation, we’ll need to see it. And wherever it goes from there isn’t up to me.”

  “You’re a piece of trash, Glenn,” I said. “She gave you two kids, and this is how you repay her? And how convenient you’re out of the house and on tape during that time? Even if you weren’t there, I’m betting we can make a case you arranged it.”

  “Me?” Glenn took a step forward. He was about my height, but he had a good forty pounds on me. While his friends were fat, Glenn wasn’t. It would be an even match if it came to blows. “Listen up. I know she’s been talking to you the past couple of years, Jack. I walked in on her plenty of times and she dropped the phone, or shuffled some papers, or closed whatever it was she was looking at on the computer. No matter how many times I caught her and asked what she was doing, she never told me. Always had some excuse. But I saw past that, man. I saw the lies on her face. She went away with the kids not too long ago. I tore the house upside down. Found all kinds of documents with your name on them. Places and times to meet. That explained some of her business trips for that garbage makeup she sold. You two coordinated it all behind my back.”

  “What’s he talking about, Jack?” April said.

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said. “Glenn, the last time I talked to Jessie was spring of 2002. I saw her for a minute at my mother’s funeral, and that was from twenty feet away. She smiled, I waved, then she patted her stomach and grabbed your arm and walked away.”

  Glenn’s cheeks turned red. “Man, don’t lie to me. I’m serious, Jack.”

  At the same time I was trying to diffuse the situation with Glenn, I was also trying to make sense of the fact that he supposedly found papers with my name on them in Jessie’s possession.

  “Kos,” he said.

  “What?”

  He spat on the ground in between us. “About six months ago, Jessie told me she was in the running for a trip to Greece. Never said much about it later, only occasionally. Keep it fresh in my head, I guess. But I found a paper that had your name and Kos on it, written in all caps. K. O. S. That’s the code for their airport there. It’s near some resort. Didn’t take much to put that one together. You were going to meet and spend a week together there.”

  “I spent some time in Greece not too long ago, but nowhere near Kos. And you’re wrong, the airport code is KGS.”

  He said nothing.

  “Glenn, I need you to put aside what you think happened. Now reach past the beer and the fast food and dig into your memory for me. Did it say KGS, or KOS?”

  “What does it matter?” He held his arms up. “I caught you.”

  “You stupid hick. Where’s this paper now?”

  “At the house. I made a copy of that one. The lawyer I spoke to said I should do that, since some of the stuff went missing.”

  “What do you mean missing?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I need to see that paper.”

  Glenn shook his head.

  April said, “I can get a warrant.”

  Glenn said, “Up yours, Noble. You ain’t getting inside my house again.”

  “Let it go, man,” I said. “Your wife wasn’t murdered.”

  “Then who’s that in the casket.”

  “Listen to me, Glenn. She wasn’t murdered. She was executed.”

  Chapter 32

  “You really made a mess up there in Crystal River,” the guy said.

  Leon counted the mailboxes as they passed. He spotted one with an owl painted on it. He smiled. He had the same one at home. When his son got home from school this afternoon, he would open it up and get the mail. Leon appreciated that. Saved him the trip outside.

  “I did what she told me to do,” Leon said. “In fact, I cleaned up a mess. No one’s gonna get anything from that murder scene now.”

  “But you killed a cop,” the guy said.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” He shifted in his seat and faced the man. “What would you have done?”

  The guy glanced over, smiled. “I would have killed the cop.”

  Leon pointed at himself and then the guy. “See, you and me, we’re the same. I’m surprised I never met you before. You do hits, too? Thought I met most everyone.”

  The guy nodded. “I’m the same as you. There are a few more of us. We’re never supposed to be in the same place at the same time. Something really went wrong if we are.”

  “What’s your name, man?”

  The guy said nothing. He slowed the car down and turned onto a driveway. It curved behind tall hedges and led to a white garage door. The man pulled the keys from the ignition and got out.

  Leon glanced around. The house was nice, big. The yard looked spacious and unnaturally green. This guy had it better than he did. Did that mean he was better? Or had he been around longer?

  Leon hopped out and headed for the front door.

  “Not that way,” the guy said. “Follow me.”

  Leon followed the man around the side of the house.

  “Still can’t get over that mess you made up there,” the guy said.

  “Ah, come on. One cop. When things go bad, we gotta do what we gotta do. Right?”

  “Yeah, I agree, but you put yourself in a position where you might have been spotted by your mark.”

  “Who, Jack? Man, that’s what I wanted to say to Vera. She had me out there as a spotter. I ain’t cut out for that. You know what I’m saying. You’d be pissed if you’d been asked to do what I had to. Right?”

  The guy nodded, and said, “Through the garage.”

  “That ain’t never happened to you before?”

  “It has.”

  “The cop or having to spot for yourself?”

  “Both, maybe.”

  “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

  “I never tell anyone my name.”

  Leon looked back at him. “But you said we’re equals. Doesn’t t
hat count for something?”

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter if you know it. My name is Alessandro.”

  Leon nodded, smiled, opened the door and stepped into the garage.

  “Although,” Alessandro said, “if you hadn’t been spotted, I wouldn’t have told you.”

  The ground crinkled underneath Leon’s feet. He looked down. He stood on a blue tarp. The door closed. The garage went dark. His arm lurched into motion, but couldn’t get to his gun fast enough. He heard a tinny sound.

  It was the last thing he ever heard.

  ***

  Alessandro stepped over the dead man and folded the end of the tarp across the corpse. He didn’t need to check vitals beforehand. The hole in the back of the Leon’s head was enough confirmation. He wrapped the man in the tarp, then strung together heavy-duty zip ties to secure the bundle.

  His panting was the only sound in the empty garage. He pulled out his phone and placed a call.

  “It’s done, V.”

  “Thank you. Leave the body in the garage and the car in the driveway. There’s a blue Impala out back. The keys are in the glove box. The code for the door is nine-four-four-eight-two. I want you to drive to Tampa. Call me when you get there.”

  Alessandro hung up. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He took two deep drags while looking down at the tarp surrounding his victim. Had he ever come this close to his employer terminating him? Sure, he’d had a couple snafus in his time. Who didn’t? The only thing he could figure was that this Jack guy had to be more dangerous than Leon, and maybe even more dangerous than himself.

  And more important than any of his previous targets.

  One thing was for sure. Alessandro couldn’t make the same mistake Leon had.

  Chapter 33

  People pointed. They gasped. They cursed at us. Even tried to block our path as we led Glenn toward April’s cruiser.

  “Back off,” Glenn called out. Matt and Jed stepped in and helped keep the rowdier attendees at bay.

  It was odd, to say the least, working together with them after a lifetime of dislike and disrespect.

  April switched on her lights and we raced through town toward Glenn’s house. On the way he described the documents he had seen. He explained that on the surface they seemed like nothing more than itineraries and meeting notes. But he never liked the names that appeared. Especially mine. His suspicions developed a few years ago after the first time he saw a correspondence to me. Of course, only Jack showed up. When I pressed him, he couldn’t produce a last name.

  He assumed.

  “If my name appeared, what else did the documents say?” I said.

  He shrugged and glanced away. “I really can’t remember. Maybe it had a city name or something.”

  “You remember which city?”

  “Nah. What does it matter anyway?”

  “Sometimes a word isn’t just a word, Glenn. Sometimes it means something else.”

  He made a noise, but said nothing.

  “Anybody ever call and hang up, say they had the wrong number? Did you ever see anyone suspicious outside your house? Ever answer the door and the person said they had the wrong house after asking for a random person?”

  Glenn looked at me. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed. He wagged his right index finger.

  “You know, I remember seeing a black sedan out there recently. Never seemed like anyone was in it. I figured one of the neighbors had family in town or something. But it showed up kinda regular, like a few times a week for a while there. The phone calls thing, yeah, I mean, we’d get a lot of calls asking for some random name. Who doesn’t? I always supposed someone had wrote our number on a few bathroom stalls.”

  Glenn smiled for a second. I didn’t.

  What the hell had Jessie gotten herself into?

  April barely touched the brake as she made the turn into the neighborhood. I had to hold onto the handle on the ceiling keep from sliding out of my seat and into hers. She stopped in front of the house.

  I stepped out into a cloud of smoke. The burned rubber stunk like a paper factory. I ran up the driveway. I heard Glenn’s heavy footsteps not far behind my own. April’s joined his a second or two later. I ripped the police tape off the two columns on either side of the porch entrance. Glenn pushed past me. He pulled out a key and stuck it in the door.

  The smell knocked all three of us back. We coughed and gagged before adjusting.

  “What the hell is that?” Glenn said.

  “Bleach and ammonia,” I said.

  He pulled his undershirt up and over his nose. “That’ll kill you, won’t it?”

  I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He led me down the hall to a spare bedroom. It looked more like a closet with a window that provided a view to the front yard and the street. They had a computer set up next to the window. Whoever sat in the chair could swing to their left and look. Presumably, they set it there so they could watch the kids playing outside while Glenn or Jessie worked on the PC.

  Or they were like the old man across the street and liked to stare through a couple glass panes all day long.

  I made a note to run the black sedan by the old guy. Perhaps he’d noticed it during one of his stake outs. Reports of aliens aside, the guy pegged Craig’s killer as far as I was concerned.

  Glenn squeezed past me. He sat down. The chair groaned under his weight. Dust rose and trickled through the sunbeams that filtered through the cracks in the blinds. He placed his arms on armrests wrapped in neon green duct tape.

  I scanned the contents of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Mostly fiction, a combination of romance and mysteries. There were a few non-fiction books on disaster preparedness, Special Forces training, and wilderness survival. Next to the bookcase there were three framed paintings on the wall. One was of a mallard. Another of the gulf at sunset. The third was a family portrait done in charcoal.

  “What the hell?” Glenn said.

  I looked over my shoulder. Glenn had his arms raised. His mouth dropped open. He shook his head.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “There’s nothing on this hard drive,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Look.”

  I took a few steps and stopped behind him. I grabbed the back of the chair and leaned over. He might have cleaned up for the funeral, but he still stunk.

  I focused on the computer. The operating system had started up, but it was as if it had been given a clean slate. The programs directory was empty. So were all the document folders. He pulled up the second hard drive. It was blank.

  “When was the last time you used the PC?” I said.

  “Couple days before Jessie was killed.”

  It was the first time I’d heard him use the word killed.

  “You mentioned files,” I said. “I assume paper files. Where are they?”

  He spun in his chair. I moved out of the way. He pulled open a drawer in a wooden file cabinet behind me.

  “The hell?” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s all gone. Look. Nothing’s in there.”

  My patience started to wear. I had a feeling that Glenn had purposefully led us astray so that the real killer could get away. I glanced toward the doorway. April stood in the hall. She lifted an eyebrow and made a gesture with her hand toward the front of the house. I shook my head.

  “Glenn?” I said.

  “Wait a minute.” He straightened up. “I know.” He got up and walked past me, past April, down the hall and into his room.

  We followed.

  He pulled clothes out of a drawer and tossed them onto the floor. Had he done the same at Sean’s house? I pushed the thought aside. That didn’t matter at the moment.

  “Here.” He held up a piece of paper. It had vertical and horizontal creases through the middle of the page. Didn’t seem to affect anything though.

  I walked over and snatched it from him. On the top I saw my first nam
e. Below that were forty letters and numbers, evenly spaced, and in some kind of random order. None of it made sense. It had to be a code of some kind. There were two inches of space below the jumbled code. At the bottom, written in big letters I saw what Glenn had referred to earlier.

  KOS

  “What’s it mean?” April said.

  I looked up. They both stared at me. I cleared my throat.

  “Kill on sight.”

  Chapter 34

  We stood in Glenn’s stuffy bedroom in a triangle formation, elbow to elbow. I held the paper in my hand. Flat, so everyone could see.

  “Jack,” April said. “Who would want to kill you on sight?”

  I said nothing.

  “What the hell are you into, man?” Glenn’s cheeks turned red. I could see him piecing together an imaginary puzzle. “What did you get my Jessie into?”

  I squared up to the man in case he tried something. “Glenn, I told you the truth earlier. I haven’t had any contact with Jessie since ’02. Whatever this is about, she got herself into it.”

  “So, what is it?” April said.

  “To figure that out, we need to break this code.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “No,” I said. “But I know people who can.”

  “Why’d they kill Jessie if you’re the KOS guy?” Glenn said.

  “Good question. Just because my name is on that page doesn’t mean I was the target. You don’t know when she wrote all of this down. The code could have been from months ago. KOS added a week ago. My name three days ago. Just the fact they are on opposite ends of the page adds doubt.”

  The three of us remained silent for a minute. The circular hum of the fan filled the void. Cold air hit my forehead. I looked up and saw a vent overhead.

  April spoke first. “Glenn, is there anything else you can tell us?”

  “There was more than this. I wish I’d have…” He backed up and sat down on the edge of his bed. It looked like he was about to have a breakdown.

  I looked at April and shrugged. Picking up on the fact that I didn’t intend to comfort the guy, she walked over to him and placed one hand on his shoulder.