by Mike Nappa
“Good morning,” Trudi said. “What can I help you with today?”
The old man tapped his cane absently on the floor and let a whole breath enter and exit before responding. “Quite a collection,” he said, pointing the cane toward the wall of bookshelves behind Trudi’s desk. “But I would have expected more in the way of practical manuals and less in the way of, well, pleasure reading.”
Trudi let her gaze drift briefly along the books on her shelves. There were several volumes of world mythology, a few books of fairy tales and folk stories. But this visitor had pointed toward the pride of her shelves, the best of her collection. The complete Edgar Allan Poe. Same with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Memoirs of Francois Eugene Vidocq. A number of Miss Marple tales, Lord Wimsey, Ellery Queen, and the rest. It was a fine gathering of detective fiction all in one place and, when possible, first editions of the books. Most of her clients barely gave the books a second look, too obsessed with whatever problem or cheating spouse or shady business dealing had brought them to her office.
Trudi wasn’t sure whether she liked that this man noticed.
She let her eyes travel slowly back to him, taking in the details. The dark suit he wore was not new but well-pressed and cleaned. It set comfortably upon him, and he within it, as though he wore it or something like it with common frequency. Coat pockets were empty, as best she could tell. No keys in his pants pockets, though she guessed a thick wallet hid behind the drapery of the suit jacket in the rear. She watched his feet rock forward slightly on his toes and realized that the cane was merely a ruse, a prop to disguise . . . what? A weapon? A recording device? She saw his fingers flex round the handle of the cane, noticed clean nails, trimmed and filed, and even through the suit coat made out a deceptively muscular build for an older man.
She stood.
“Thank you for noticing,” she said at last. “My guess is that your collection is twice as large as mine. And all first editions, whereas mine mixes in the new with the old. Am I right, Mr. . . . ?”
She watched a grin play at his lips. A slight nod of appreciation.
“You can call me Dr. Smith,” he said, easing himself into the ornate metal guest chair across from her desk.
“Really?” Trudi toyed. “That’s the best you can do?”
This time a chuckle escaped the old man. He reached into his back pocket to produce a thick, bifold wallet. He flipped it open and laid it on the desktop, never taking his hand off the end. Trudi eyed the identification card inside: Dr. Jonathan Smith. Address on the card was somewhere in New York City. She nodded.
“So it would appear that Dr. Smith really is your name,” she said.
He nodded amiably and returned the wallet to his pocket.
“But you’ll forgive me if I maintain just an ounce of doubt about that, right?” she said. “After all, I have half a dozen ID cards around this place. One might even have my real name on it. But, of course, the rest are all made simply to put people at ease with whatever story I need them to believe.”
“I grant you that ounce of doubt,” the old man said. Then he leaned in close. “And yes, you passed my test. For the moment, at least.”
Trudi nodded, annoyed that he’d even had a test for her to pass. And irritated at herself for so quickly rising to the bait.
“Well, then, Dr. Smith. What can I do for you today?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
His eyes wandered through the doorway and toward the storage room across the hall from Trudi’s office.
“Missing persons?”
“Not exactly. Though he has been absent for a number of years now.”
“Does he owe you money?” Trudi wished she hadn’t asked that question as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Anyone with common sense could see that this Dr. Smith had no need of monetary gain. Still, people like him were often prone to insist on recovery of their money—at any cost—so Trudi figured it made sense to ask.
“Oh no, not that.” He smirked. “But he does owe my employer something. He stole it, a number of years ago, and it has taken me this long to follow the trail to you.”
Trudi tried not to let her eyebrows rise, nor to let her gaze wander away from the old man. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand squeeze the cane. A release button? she wondered. Didn’t they make canes that hid swords inside them? Or that concealed miniature pistols in the handles?
“Let’s call it missing persons, then,” she said swiftly. “Rates for a missing persons case involve a flat fee up front, daily expenses—including travel—and a finder’s fee bonus when the case is complete. If, after six months, there’s no realistic progress toward finding your missing person, I’ll refund half of the flat fee you paid up front. But I’m very good at uncovering secrets, so I don’t expect that’ll be applicable in this case.”
“Oh no, Ms. Coffey, I’m not here to hire your agency.” The smile looked almost sincere. “I don’t doubt your abilities. I just trust my own more. I’ve been working on this case for over a decade, and I’m not planning to relinquish it anytime soon.”
Trudi ground her teeth. Another time-wasting moron.
“So, you’re a PI, here in search of professional courtesy or something?”
He stood and removed the wallet again. He pulled a sheaf of hundred dollar bills neatly out of the lining and dropped them on the desk.
“All I want is information,” he said, “and I think that should cover your time, am I right?”
That would cover a month of my time, Trudi said to herself. To Dr. Smith she said, “Why don’t you tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you whether or not that covers it.”
He returned to his seat and now pulled a photo from the wallet. He laid it on the desk next to the money.
Truck, Trudi thought, what have you done now?
Dr. Smith said nothing at first but studied her eyes with interest. Then, “I see that you recognize this man. I would very much like to find him. According to my sources, he last surfaced in Atlanta four and a half years ago, and then disappeared into either Alabama or Tennessee.”
“Never seen him.”
She said it too quickly, she knew.
Dr. Smith let himself relax in the chair. “Detective Coffey,” he said, “you’ll forgive me if I maintain just an ounce of doubt about that, right?”
“It’s a free country.”
“Sometimes, yes.”
Okay, she thought. Time to play stupid little girl. “Well, I don’t know this man, never met him. At least not that I remember. Who is he, anyway, and why are you looking for him?”
Dr. Smith didn’t respond at first. He made no move to end the conversation, nor did he seem ready to prolong it. He just studied her face, obviously, without fear of retribution.
Well, Trudi figured, silence was a powerful tool in a private investigator’s arsenal. So she waited. Wait long enough, she’d discovered, and the other guy almost always gave away something he didn’t mean to give. She returned his gaze, trying to look interested and transparent. She pictured butterflies in a meadow, and let that look waft toward the scrutiny of the visiting Dr. Smith.
“His name,” Smith said at last, “is Steven Grant. At least that’s what it was when I first came to know of him. I’m told that was one of a few dozen names that he used. Uses. Perhaps you know him by a different name?”
Trudi hunched over the picture. Yep, it was definitely Truck. Last time she’d seen him was four and a half years ago, though he’d spent most of the time talking privately with her ex-husband and ex-PI partner, Samuel Hill. The pig.
She shrugged and looked placidly back at the old man, dreaming of monarchs and swallowtails as she grinned. “Maybe he changed his name to Smith.”
Dr. Smith chuckled with genuine amusement. He stood. “Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Coffey. I do have other leads to follow, so I’ll be on my way.” A pause, then, “Please wish your former husband my best when you call him five minutes from now.”
Trudi couldn’t stop her face from flushing red. She scooped up the cash still on the desk and held it toward the man. “Call him yourself,” she said evenly. “We’re no longer on speaking terms, as I’m sure you know.”
The old man gave a slight nod and collected the money from Trudi’s hand. He dropped one bill back onto the desk. “For your hospitality,” he said. Then he stepped casually toward the door. “Perhaps we’ll meet again under more favorable circumstances, Ms. Coffey,” he said at the exit. Then he was gone.
Trudi watched the old man on the reception monitor until he left the office completely. She then switched to the outdoor camera and saw him get into a waiting car, a black Mercedes GL-Class SUV. Expensive taste, she thought. The vehicle drove slowly away and out of sight.
Truck and Samuel always had secrets, she knew that. They’d been close before Trudi had met either of them. But what had Leonard Truckson done that kept a trail hot more than four years after she’d last seen him?
“No,” she said aloud, “that old man said he’d been on Truck’s tail for more than a decade.”
Why? What was so valuable that it was worth a ten-year search? And what did Samuel Hill have to do with it?
Trudi waited a full eight minutes before buzzing Eulalie in the reception area.
“Get me a secure line,” she grumbled, “then get my ex-husband on the phone. The pig.”
3
The Mute
Tuesday, September 1
The night felt cool, a welcome respite from the dry heat wave that had been lingering for several days over the hollows and meadows of southern Alabama’s farm country.
The Mute shifted his weight over the cross branch and settled his legs on the Y-shaped stems that spread out midtrunk from the aged scrub oak tree above the sentry outpost. He knew Truck preferred that he stay inside the cube-shaped, camouflaged building below, but on nights when the air was moving, it felt like suffocating to sit inside that one-room woodshed, blocked from the breath of heaven that swept freely through the knotted oaks and pines at this edge of Truck’s farm. Besides, Truck rarely questioned The Mute’s instincts. That had been true even before the IED had stolen his voice.
Most people thought that Truck called him The Mute out of cruelty. That it was a sign of power for him to say it, and get away with it, right to The Mute’s face. But most people were just as ignorant as they looked. Leonard Truckson had given him that name long before he was forced into silence.
“So, you’re the new Special Forces sniper,” Truck had said at the army barracks just outside of Fallujah, Iraq. “For a Georgia boy, you sure don’t talk much, do you?”
The Mute had just nodded and continued cleaning the rifle pieced out on his bunk. There had been a moment of silence between the two men, and then Truck had stuck out a calloused hand.
“I like men who know how to keep quiet,” he said. “I’d be honored to call you a friend.”
The Mute had considered a moment, and then taken the hand.
Truck had a different name then, a different cover identity working as a sergeant within the US Army apparatus. He introduced himself and waited.
The Mute had shrugged at the introduction, unwilling to let his own name loose in return at just that moment. Truck had waited a heartbeat or two, then grinned and slapped him on the shoulder.
“I think I’ll call you The Mute,” he said. “Fits, don’t you think?”
The Mute.
Sounded kind of mysterious. Sounded kind of right. He nodded.
Truck had turned to the rest of the barracks then. “This here new boy is The Mute. Anybody got a problem with him gets a problem with me. We clear, soldiers?”
A lackluster chorus of “Sir yes sir” filtered back, and it was good enough.
It took only a few days for The Mute to realize what a gift old Truckson had given to him with that name. Soldiers here had a pecking order, and those with seemingly insulting nicknames were the ones who demanded the most respect. Truck must have known what it felt like to be a Southern boy lost in a whole wide world. So Truck gave him a man’s name, a soldier’s name. And he became that man, he became that soldier.
A few weeks later, Truck appeared at his bunk just after midnight. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. The Mute knew what a Special Forces sniper was supposed to do. They left in the dark of night, heading into enemy territory inside restive Fallujah. They returned before 5:00 a.m. hauling a man Truck would only call “an asset.”
The asset was bound and gagged, smelling of fear, sweat, and urine, and covered so tightly with a head sack that The Mute wondered how he could possibly breathe inside there. But Truck was unconcerned, so The Mute let it go. Neither soldier had uttered a word during the entire kidnapping; neither had to. Truck was mercilessly efficient, and The Mute knew enough to follow orders even when they were delivered only with eye twitches, head bobs, and hand waves.
They’d taken the asset right out of his bed, so quickly and so quietly that his wife, sleeping beside him, never roused in the night.
The Mute didn’t know exactly what happened to “the asset” after they brought him back. Truck pulled their Jeep to a running stop just outside the gates to the camp and, eyes gleaming, waited for The Mute to exit. Then he drove off into the desert. When he returned later that afternoon, he was alone.
Truck never spoke of the raid, and The Mute didn’t see any reason to talk about it either, so that was that.
Six days later, Air Force drones blew up two houses in western Fallujah, and the newswires trumpeted that four high-value members of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Ba’ath Party had been killed in the attack. The news didn’t mention how US intelligence had known which houses to target, but The Mute had a pretty good idea.
For nineteen months, Truck and The Mute made their raids. Sometimes other soldiers would join them; most times they went alone. The official name was Operation Desert Scorpion, but inside Iraq they were just known as ghost raiders, and they became scary bedtime stories Iraqi parents used to keep their children inside and safe at night.
And before long, almost nobody could remember The Mute’s real name. Under Truck’s leadership and influence, everyone just called him The Mute. He liked that. It felt safe. It felt right.
Neither Truck nor The Mute could have guessed that nickname would also be prophetic.
By the time the improvised explosive device blew up under his Humvee, The Mute had figured he and Truck might go on forever striking fear into the dark places where terrorists hid. And then . . . well, then it was over.
When the vehicle shattered into burning shrapnel beneath him, all he could think was, Truck’s gonna have to find himself a new Mute. He felt blood gurgling in his throat, felt heat and agony cooking his flesh and paralyzing his mind. He waited to die.
Then a pair of strong, weathered hands appeared from nowhere, pulling him out of the fire, dousing him with water, shouting orders, binding wounds. Cursing at him for being so stupid. Commanding him not to die.
The Mute slipped in and out of consciousness for days he couldn’t remember. When he finally awoke for good, Sergeant Truckson was sleeping in the chair beside his hospital bed. The Mute started to say something, felt fire burning in his throat, and realized he couldn’t speak. Poetic justice, he supposed. So he lay there, waiting, until Truck opened his eyes and saw him looking.
“’Bout time you woke up,” Truck muttered sleepily. “You’re too ornery to die. And I’m too stubborn to let you.”
After that, people thought it impolite to call him The Mute. Nurses and doctors started referring to him by his given name, even put it on his discharge papers. Folks on the base called him “Corporal” or “Sir” when they wanted something. Soon he’d be going back to an empty home in Atlanta, just another grunt blown out of the army by an enemy attack.
People thought they were showing respect by politely discarding his nickname. They were really just heaping pity on the wounded soldier who was now, somehow, les
s than he was before. Only Truck was different. Only Truck treated him like a man. Only Truck called him by the name he’d come to think of as his real one.
The Mute.
Sitting up in this tree on a cool September night, The Mute grinned. Truck had saved his life in more ways than one. And back here in the States, on this lonely farm, hidden away in the shadow of the Conecuh National Forest, he kept saving it.
“A man needs a purpose,” Truck often said, “a reason to be more than a man.”
The Mute figured Truck to be right on that account. And that was why he hadn’t gone back to Georgia after his discharge. It was why, night after night, he manned this sentry outpost on the edge of Truck’s farm, waiting for what he hoped would never come. Ready for what he knew would arrive eventually, regardless of what he hoped.
The night was cool. Crickets droned in waves. Leadbelly frogs croaked wet percussion in a distant swamp. The wind sighed lullabies through leaves and trees here in this moment.
It’s a good life, he told himself. And he believed it. He was grateful for it.
The Mute leaned his head back into a worn-out groove on the tree trunk behind him.
He smiled.
He closed his eyes.
And dreamed of singing.
He awoke just after 4:00 a.m., the world around him oddly blanketed in silence.
Down below, the sentry cabin was almost imperceptible in the shadows of night. The Mute forced himself not to move, and instead to listen, to understand. He wished now that he’d brought along his M39 marksman rifle when he climbed up this tree, but it remained inside the sentry post below, leaning uselessly against a wall. He felt a little, well, unprofessional, leaving a weapon behind like that, so he decided to make a mental check of his other weapons, just for the discipline of the exercise: a Kahr K9098N handgun with night sights, strapped to his left thigh; a Smith and Wesson knife blade, hanging on a thick metal chain wrapped around his neck and dipping inside his shirt; a .22 short mini-revolver tucked safely inside his right boot.
He reached inside a cargo pocket on his pants and extracted a pair of night-vision goggles, turning the forest an illuminated green in one swift motion.