Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “Get some sleep,” Xavier said. “We’ve got a long day of airplane food and jet lag ahead of us.”

  Glenda didn’t stop him as he backed off and returned his spot against the wall. Whatever he wanted meant just that. Damn.

  ****

  Roberts slung his sport coat over his shoulder as he walked down to the break-room in a mild huff. He was sick at the idea of hearing one more message from those damn reporters, asking when he first believed Glenda Jameson had faked an assault on herself. There were fewer since Penfield had publicly backed him up, but they still crept in under the sheep’s clothing of real reporters trying to get to the “truth.” Roberts was going to wait a half-hour or so before going home. Hopefully the herd in the news vans outside would be thinner by then.

  He walked right up to the last vending machine in the building that displayed the closest thing to junk food. Everything else, kept under the glass, was organic this or natural that. The odds were that pretty soon Roberts would no longer be able to get an overpriced, prepackaged, apple-like pastry ejected from a giant metal box. Hell, not five years ago it was caffeine and tobacco that everybody lived off of, especially cops. Now it was all herbal cigarettes and those detestable potions disguised as sport drinks. God help us if whole wheat cigars and distilled cow urine ever proves to shrink the prostate.

  Once Roberts had his snack/dinner in the palm of his hand, he sat down at one of the many empty tables in the break-room and immediately remembered he’d forgotten to get a drink. Just as quickly, he decided he was too lazy to walk back to the machines, barely ten paces away. Screw it. He would wash down the fortified pie thingy when he was ready to leave.

  “Hey, Rob, Robbo, Robertha,” someone said. “What's the word?”

  It was Silas Lally from forensics. He was doing that silly name-game thing that he was well aware annoyed the hell out of people. His mostly bald head bopped to a nondescript tune no one else could hear. He did a dance that looked something like a one-man waltz, to the coffee machine and ordered up a cup of black with two sugars.

  “Hey, Silas,” Roberts said. “Shouldn't you be on your way home to those fur-balls you call roommates...I mean cats?”

  “Asked the fifty-year-old divorcee who can't remember what a toilet seat looks like with the lid down.”

  Roberts giggled. Not everyone in the precinct called Silas Lally likeable, but even those who didn't got a kick out of his one-liners.

  “And I would’ve gone home twenty minutes ago if you high and mighty door kickers were a bit more respectable of my space,” Silas said.

  “What’s your complaint this time, Silas?”

  Truthfully, Roberts couldn't have cared less about Silas Lally's woes; the little goober was always beefing about something. But he was a solid forensic man with indisputable instincts and the detectives always trusted him to go the extra mile. It was worth it to stay within his good graces.

  “Nothing big. Just do me a favor and tell the guys in your squad to make a little effort to let me know before they go using the computers in my IDVantage.” The IDVantage analysis software was Silas Lally’s pride and joy. The department had paid through the nose to acquire it a few years back, after he’d petitioned everyone but the president. He also held the budget office’s feet to the fire about regular upgrades. To mess with Silas Lally's IDVantage was to mess with Silas Lally.

  “If one of our guys used your IDVantage without telling you then he probably needed the results for a warrant,” Roberts said. “Justice is best served hot, out of the oven, you know?”

  “So’s an Angus steak and Swiss, which I never got to finish, thanks to your boy, Northrupp,” Silas retorted.

  “Who?”

  “Northrupp, the guy who’s been going over that video for you.”

  “Northcutt? Marcus Northcutt?”

  “Yeah, right. That’s him.”

  “Northcutt was using your IDVantage? When?”

  “This afternoon, during my lunch break. I appreciate him not wanting to cut into my off-time, but he kind of canceled-out his good intentions when he accidentally closed out the software I was trying to update. Set me back a good hour’s worth of work.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “I assumed he was lifting a set of prints from that revolver he had with him.”

  “Revolver?”

  “Yeah, an old .38 he picked up somewhere. Can you believe it? Haven't seen one of those in a long time.”

  Roberts nodded. He ripped the wrapping off his dinner and stared at it. It was heavy with filling and had a crust that looked like glazed cardboard. He recalled talking to Northcutt for at least ten minutes earlier in the afternoon, long after Silas’s clockwork lunch break. He hadn’t said a word about finding an old .38.

  “Silas, are you absolutely sure that’s what he was doing? I mean, did you get a look at what he was working with?”

  “I know my guns, Robbie. I came back a little early from lunch to check up on the software’s loading and I got a look at it when I walked in, just before he stuffed it into his pocket. Hope he got whatever it was he was trying to get, because he forgot to rewrap it in the baggie he had with him.”

  He forgot? Northcutt? He’d sooner forget how to start his car than make that kind of mistake with evidence, least of all a suspect weapon. Roberts gripped his chin. It sounded more like Northcutt had been startled by Silas; like he wasn’t expecting him to come back when he did, and didn’t want him seeing what he was working on.

  Roberts narrowed an eye. He suddenly wanted to know exactly where the gun in question had come from. Glenda Jameson had been rescued downtown by a guy with a revolver. She wasn't a fan of guns, but her father was a hunter. According to her, she had enough rudimentary knowledge of them to know a thirty-eight when she saw one.

  “Well, no need to hassle him about it if you see him, Silas,” Roberts said. “I’ll be sure to talk to him.”

  Chapter 39

  Miles Gabriel entered Wallace’s office just in time to catch the nauseating bray from the adjoined room. As he approached its door, the moaning and grunting became louder until it climaxed in a ghastly wheeze that signaled the end of the vicious exercise against the natural order. “Ugh,” Gabriel grunted and choked back a plash of bile. He then knocked on the door.

  “Who the hell is that?” Wallace yelled from inside. His stricken voice pierced the door like static.

  Gabriel shook his head. The old man knew exactly who it was; no one else would have dared interrupt. After several seconds, the door opened to Jerome Wallace, standing sweaty and shirtless, wearing only his trousers. Gabriel immediately averted his eyes. Whatever was good shape for a man of sixty plus years, he supposed Wallace was in, but that didn’t make the sight any easier to take home.

  “Sorry,” Gabriel said insincerely. He peered over Wallace's shoulder to see, Mai Ling Chow, seated on a corner of the room's bed replacing her bra. She looked annoyed. Wallace had barely let her get her panties back on before opening the door. The egotistical old shit had wanted Gabriel to see her in a state of undress. To Mai Ling's dismay, Wallace probably even wanted her to be humiliated as much as he wanted Gabriel to be jealous.

  “We have to talk,” Gabriel said.

  Wallace sighed as if he knew Gabriel was about to piss all over his post-coitus parade. He huffed past the lawyer and into an adjacent bathroom without a word.

  Gabriel watched unenthusiastically as Chow retrieved her black skirt and cream colored blouse which were strewn by a small waste-can with the—“Ugh”—condom slung over the rim like a dirty sock. She dressed with no particular hurry. If she was nettled about being half-naked in front of Gabriel before, she seemed completely fine with it now. In fact, he might as well have been a stick of furniture for all she cared of his sentiments. When she was done, she even sidled past him, slinking like an alley cat with her tail in the air. For the right price, he could be next.

  It was just over a minute before Wallace emerged from the bat
hroom buttoning up his shirt. He'd wiped himself down with a washcloth and splashed some cold water on his face. However, his cheeks were still red as a beet from the afterglow.

  “Ms. Chow,” Wallace said, stopping her short of the office door. “be sure to confirm my meeting with the mayor for Friday.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied and then walked out.

  Wallace beamed. “Five months I’ve been waiting to bone that,” he said to Gabriel.

  “Isn’t that about how long she’s been here?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yep.”

  “What took you so long?”

  Wallace laughed. “Not as young as I used to be; what can I tell you. She’s worth it, though. Last night I almost pasted her to the ceiling.”

  “Thank you, Jerome,” Gabriel sighed. “I have put on a few pounds and I’ve been looking for a reason to skip lunch.”

  “I’ll probably have to buy her a car or something to keep things cool between us. I’d hate to have to fire her. She actually does a damn good job. Suppose there had to be a brain in there somewhere.” Wallace moved to behind his desk, where he sat down and spun in his chair like a little kid at Six Flags. He planted his feet and peered out the window. There were no less than three major construction projects within plain view. One dedicated, as always, to the expansion of BioCore. “Look at it, Miles. Twenty years ago, the sight of a trolley packed with ignorant tourists in this town could have only been a punchline for a joke that started with a duck, a rabbi, and a hooker walking into a bar. But now...an entire city is experiencing a life it never believed possible...not until I came along.” Wallace shook his finger in the air. “And never has it been more jeopardized than right now.”

  Gabriel tugged at his ear. He knew where this was going. “Not as much as it could have been,” he said.

  Wallace rotated his chair, exposing his profile to Gabriel and poignantly pressed an index finger into his cheek. “You’re right. I’ve made mistakes. And one of the biggest I've made was listening to you when you suggested that I refrain from dispatching anyone against the good senator.”

  Oh, Jesus, here we go, Gabriel thought. That “ingenious” plan of replacing Beaumont before the vote. How many reasons did Gabriel have to rattle off to prove it wouldn’t work? They would never have gotten close enough to procure a viable helping of DNA. Beaumont rarely traveled alone and was fanatical when it came to protecting his genetic material. They also couldn't just kill him. Wallace had suggested that as well. He figured if it looked like a drug overdose or something of that nature it would discredit Beaumont. It was a dumb idea. Beaumont—love him or hate him—had a doggedly loyal following of voters. If the man died from so much as a coronary, it would be suspicious and may have potentially martyred him. Sure, he had a perpetually disheveled appearance; tabloids all over the country loved to needle him about it—said it looked like he was on something. But Beaumont ate right, took supplements, exercised and kept biannual physical checkups. His shlubby appearance was just a way of psychologically separating himself from the rest of the beltway boys.

  No.

  Beaumont was more idea than man. And ideas were cloaked in the armor of God. Finding its chink would take the tools of a craftsman. Gabriel started to speak.

  “I hate Americans,” Wallace said. “They're idiots. Their attention span is for shit! Just last year that lefty human nut-sack was dodging press rumors about Maguire and now he's back stronger than ever! In less than two weeks, the United States Senate will likely pass a bill that will have every one of my labs crawling with bureaucrats jamming their noses in my files and their microscopes up my ass. That chicken-shit president will sign it and oversight committees will be in here investigating my experiments and tagging DNA samples. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if they discover exactly who it is that I’ve got little pieces of in the fridge. The Jameson woman, still, has not been found nor has Richard Kelmer, so they both remain a potential threat. And I am no closer to stopping the passage of that bill than I was before. Have I left anything out?”

  “Just this,” Gabriel said and produced a Nanopod from his pocket. He hit play and it belted out a male voice they’d never heard.

  “...fucking asshole! Do you even have a conscious? No, for that you'd need a brain! I knew it! I knew you were full of shit as soon as I saw your face, you...”

  Gabriel stopped the playback.

  “Your ex-husband?” Wallace joked.

  “Very funny,” Gabriel said. “And that's not the important part.” He fast-forwarded the recording.

  “...crazier; you or me? Okay, okay, I'll get you some extra cash, but this is it, you got it?”

  “Thank you, Benny,” a second voice said.

  “Unbelievable. All these years I never got a 'thank you' from you for anything and I'm already sick of hearing it. I hope you're at least sure about what you're doing.”

  “I’m not sure of anything, except it’s the best lead we’ve got. She's pinning all her hopes on finding this Kelmer guy. I pray she’s right. Look, I gotta go. The plane’s landing in ten minutes. Thanks again.”

  Wallace licked his lips. “Miles, tell me I can take only good things from what I just heard.”

  “His name is Xavier Hawkins. He’s a former Army MP, dishonorably discharged. Served overseas, most recently during the Syrian uprising. He was taking up residence at a veteran's center, being treated for substance abuse, until he just wandered away. The man he was talking to was his brother, a Dr. Bennet Hawkins, who lives in Shaker Heights. The plane he was on was a Qantas red-eye to Seattle.”

  Gabriel preened victoriously, an involuntary curl snaking up the corner of his mouth. Less than two hours after learning Xavier Hawkins's identity from Marcus Northcutt, Gabriel had surveillance on Bennet Hawkins's property. Tapping the doctor's comm-hub on the outside of the house was tricky, but the ex bureau man he'd hired was top notch.

  “So he is a bum,” Wallace noted. “She’s being aided by a fucking bum.” There had to be more to it, he thought. He never bought that shit about truth being stranger than fiction. If this was truth, it would make it to the New York Time’s bestseller list. “What's this about Seattle?”

  “I think they’re looking for Kelmer, and maybe going to meet him,” Gabriel said.

  “You're kidding!”

  “I’ve already got people working on a location. So far, we know Kelmer’s flown out to Seattle at least three times in the last year. We should have something before the end of the day.”

  “So they could be taking us right to him.” Wallace shrugged. “Shit, it never even occurred to me that she, herself, would go looking for him. She's got more guts than we thought.” He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed hotly. “Damn it! I gave orders to feed a company line about Kelmer being fired to anyone who called here looking for him. I was afraid it would be more cops. She could have called here days ago and led us right to her.”

  “I'll check with reception before I leave.”

  Wallace eased back in his chair, looking much calmer. He shifted his gaze to focus on an inverted desk-pendulum that swayed devotedly beside his holo-blotter. He pinched its top between his thumb and forefinger. “The second you get a location, I want their presence verified...and all of them gone.”

  Gabriel fought this time to keep the corners of his mouth level. “And the deal?”

  “The deal will still go through as planned. We just have to make sure it’s done clean; no trace of evidence, and I mean not a scrap. And make no mistake—I mean that literally—I want them all erased this time! No more screw ups!”

  Chapter 40

  Seattle, Washington, August 31, 4:32 p.m. PDT

  The mighty Seattle clouds beat back the sun as Glenda and Xavier's rental car braked atop the winding dirt road. So far, Seattle had been nothing but one huge blur. Their plane had touched down at Sea-Tac Airport just after 3:00 a.m. and despite their exhaustion, Xavier wanted to get moving at the first crack of daylight. Glenda, however, w
as instantly inebriated by the spell of a bed a thousand miles away from the origins of their tribulation; Xavier let her sleep most of the morning as he held vigil, entangled in the beauty of her tranquility. Xavier wished he could have slept, but he was too busy feeling shitty about his last conversation with his brother. He had called Benny from the plane to borrow more cash to keep he and Glenda afloat as their travel expenses dwindled. Benny was uber-pissed. He'd learned of the shootings just minutes after Glenda and Xavier had left the house. He'd felt like a fool and said he wanted Xavier's head on a plate. Then he wired the money. Good ol' Benny.

  By the end of the afternoon Glenda and Xavier were on the last three miles of a jaunt to an isolated stretch of property around First Hill. Dana Holliman's directions were precise, but the property's actual acreage was enormous. They came to a stop on a small plateau overlooking at least half of it. Xavier looked out his window over an ocean of greenery. There were trees like skyscrapers as far as the eye could see. Glenda tapped the navigation icon inlaid on the car's dashboard display. The map jumped out at her once more and she tracked their current path with a fingernail.

  “Damn place better be in there somewhere,” Xavier said. He wanted to be back at the motel before dark. Skulking around a secluded house, cut off from the main roads and shrouded by a nighttime forest was a movie everyone had seen. There was no need to tempt fate.

  “It has to be,” Glenda replied.

  They proceeded down the steep road and were quickly enveloped by a froth of tall trees. About 500 yards in, they turned onto a graveled driveway that sloped into a flattened out two-acre piece of land with the most astonishing-looking house rooted in the center. It was basically a broad stone villa with a second-story tier on the south wing. The architecture was sleek and mechanical, more like a small office building than a home. The most striking characteristic, however, was the roof, which was constructed entirely of next-generation, high capacity solar panels. They’d been laid like expensive floor tile, sparkling in the intermediate sun like sheets of crushed sapphires. The only windows were thick, opaque, oblong panels that ran in twin rows across the upper part of each wing. No big bays or skylights. An odd feature for a house that was supposed to be completely reliant on solar energy. A few small shrubs entailed the outside, but no tall growth appeared anywhere within fifty yards of the structure in order to keep any light-depriving shade from the roof. Xavier drove into the house's cement horseshoe and parked. He and Glenda then exited the car and stood, gawking.