Convicted

by Kim Fielding

  But he’d never been able to choose what to read, and now he could.

  The rack held the types of books that, he expected, people wanted to read on holiday. Spies, romances, and wizards, with a few old classics thrown in for good measure. Des found nearly all of them appealing and ended up grabbing almost at random, avoiding only those that looked to feature killers or monsters. He’d had plenty of that already. He ended up with over a dozen titles, almost too many to carry. Undaunted, Kurt paid for them all, buying nothing for himself except a pack of mint gum.

  Up in their room, Des arranged himself on the bed with his reading material at hand, feeling like a prince. Kurt sat at the desk writing, as he did every night, in his black-covered notebook. He never explained what he was doing, and Des hadn’t asked. Work, presumably. Kurt didn’t seem the type to scribble poetry or dash off short stories in the evening.

  “Do you travel a lot?”

  Kurt shot him an annoyed look. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you like it?” When no response came, Des continued. “From the time I was fourteen until I got caught, I never stayed anywhere for long. I saw a lot of the country. Didn’t sleep anywhere as posh as this, of course, but that’s not such a worry when you’re young. Loneliness is, though.” Damn. Why had he said that last bit?

  “Is that why you took up with Krane?”

  “I explained that before. He was pretty and smart, and he had a little money in his pocket. That was all I needed.”

  That wasn’t exactly the truth. Des remembered the solitude of his early vagrant life, where he sometimes went days without exchanging more than a few words with people, where everyone was a stranger. Even when he’d pick up a bloke in a bar, it had been nothing more than a quick fumble and poke. He usually never even learned their names. He’d told himself then that this was freedom, but he hadn’t truly believed it. And later, confined within stone and iron, he’d thought that in some ways things had been worse while on the road. Which was less grievous to a starving man: to remove all food, or to keep a feast within his sight but never let him taste it?

  Kurt grunted and turned back to his notebook.

  Des picked up and opened one of the paperbacks, but his eyes focused not on the pages but on Kurt. He had a long, lean body tight with wiry muscles, and even at his most relaxed, he retained tension around his shoulders. He looked taut even while he slept. His hands moved gracefully, however, and sometimes he licked his lower lip in concentration. He didn’t seem a happy man, but he wasn’t angry either. Des wondered what he’d been like when he used to drink: loud and heavy-handed, like Des’s father, or quiet and withdrawn, a turtle pulled into its shell.

  Eventually Kurt finished writing. He tucked the book into his jacket pocket, grabbed a few items from his bag, and went into the bathroom. Des hoped that he wasn’t changing clothes in private due to discomfort at being seen naked by a gay man. Kurt emerged not long afterward, smelling of hotel soap and fully dressed, as usual—wearing flannel pants and a T-shirt, even here in Florida, where the air conditioning struggled against the heat.

  Des took a shower next. Oh, and it was lovely, with all the hot water he wanted and shampoo that left his hair soft and smelling of berries. As he had the previous nights, he soaped up the bracelet and attempted to pull it off. He knew he wouldn’t succeed, but he had to try anyway.

  When he got out of the shower, he spent time with another part of his routine: staring into the mirror. He didn’t look as old and decrepit as he’d feared, which was good, but his face still seemed unfamiliar.

  Deciding it was too warm for any clothing, Des came out of the bathroom naked. The main room was dark, so he stood in the doorway for a moment to get his bearings. Before he turned off the bathroom light, he saw Kurt looking at him. Staring. There wasn’t enough light for him to read Kurt’s expression, but something about the angle of his head on the pillow made Des’s breath go shallow and caused heat to pool in his belly.

  Hurriedly, he switched off the light and stumbled to his bed.

  “Is it hard on your family, you being gone so often?” Des truly wanted to know but didn’t expect an answer.

  “I’m divorced. My kid is almost grown. They do fine without me.” There was something rote about the way Kurt said this, as if he’d rehearsed it. As if he’d said it to himself many times. Had he been trying to reassure himself or… prepare for something? Being a Bureau agent was not always a safe job.

  “Do you date much? Maybe it’s difficult for you to find the time, but I expect many women would be thrilled to go out with an agent. It would be exciting for them.”

  “I’m not interested in those women.” With that equivocal statement, Kurt rolled over, and Des recognized the too-rapid breathing of feigned sleep.

  Des remembered being in Florida with Larry eighteen years earlier. He remembered the rainstorms and the lizards, the swampy-looking ponds among stands of trees, the tacky shops selling cheap T-shirts and beach towels. What he didn’t remember was the name of the motel where they’d stayed for two weeks.

  “So bloody many of them,” he complained as they rolled by yet another unfamiliar structure. Kurt had a list of properties that had existed in 1975, but it wasn’t entirely helpful. Some hotels had changed names while others retained their original names but had been entirely remodeled or demolished and rebuilt. And everything looked wildly different from what Des remembered, partly because Disney World had been only a few years old when he was last there. Both the park and the city had grown considerably in the interim.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t this one?” Kurt asked. He’d parked in front of a two-story white building with turquoise trim. Battered doors lined the upper and lower walkways, while sick-looking palms drooped near a small pool with algae-green water.

  “I’m sure.”

  “They could have painted it different colors or changed the landscaping.”

  “The one where we stayed was shaped differently. There was a sort of alcove where the two wings of the building came together. The vending machines were tucked in there. Larry used to send me down to fetch cigarettes when he was working. And the office was at one end, with a taller roof than the rest of it.”

  Kurt swore under his breath, crossed an item off his list, and threw the paper at Des in disgust. “Almost two whole days and nothing. I hope to hell you’re not drawing this out on purpose.”

  Maybe Des would have done exactly that, but he didn’t need to; he honestly remembered very little. He’d lived footloose for nearly a decade, and all of the places he’d stayed tended to bleed together in his mind. For years he’d been deliberately suppressing the memories of his time with Larry. Recalling details now was like digging up a scrap of newsprint that had been buried under a pile of earth. Nothing was distinct.

  With a grunt of annoyance, Kurt pulled out of the parking lot onto the busy street.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Des pointed out. “We could head back to the hotel and you’d have time for the gym before dinner.”

  “This isn’t a fucking vacation.”

  “Maybe you could make it one, at least for a bit. When’s the last time you had a holiday?”

  “We’re not the only ones looking for those goddamn boxes. Chief says he has intel that someone else is on the hunt. If we don’t find the boxes first, people will die. Lots of people.”

  Oh. Des suddenly realized that Kurt cared about those hypothetical people and their fates. He wasn’t in this simply to make a living or feel like a hero. Des decided to test the waters, simply because he could. “They’ll die anyhow, won’t they? Everyone does. And how are they your responsibility? You didn’t make the bloody boxes and you didn’t hide them either. They’ve nothing to do with you.”

  The answer came on a whisper. “They’re my responsibility because I’ve chosen to make them so.”

  Any further discussion was curtailed when Kurt stopped at the next address on the list, only a few blocks from the last. The sign read Royal Tropic
s Inn, which didn’t ring any bells, but Des recognized the building at once. There was the odd roofline over the office, as if the architect had begun designing one kind of structure and then changed his mind for the rest. There was the alcove where Des had bought cigarettes, Coke, and potato chips. And there was the second-floor balcony where Des had sat most evenings, watching geckos chase bugs.

  “This is it.”

  Kurt let out a long exhale and turned off the engine. “Which unit was yours?”

  “That one.” Des pointed. “Third from the right.” He couldn’t quite remember the room’s interior, which had probably resembled a hundred other rooms he’d stayed in. But he did recall crossing this parking lot on foot on his way back from a grocery store, arms laden with heavy bags. He’d glanced up to find Larry at the walkway railing, smiling down at him. “Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Larry had called to him. Des hadn’t recognized the source of the quote, though, and Larry had to clarify it when Des got upstairs, every scornful syllable of the explanation showing Larry’s contempt for Des’s lack of education.

  “I’ve read it now, though,” he muttered, which was true. For a few months in his cell, he’d possessed a volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

  “What?” asked Kurt.

  “Nothing.”

  “Stay here. I need to make a phone call.”

  “You’re going to trust me alone in your car?”

  Without answering, Kurt got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. It wasn’t far to the motel office, where a pay phone was attached to the exterior wall. He inserted a coin, punched in a number, and began what looked like an earnest conversation.

  Des looked at the key. He even reached over and touched the keychain, which had an unmarked brass disk hanging from it. But he didn’t unfasten his seatbelt or make any move toward the driver’s seat.

  Perhaps this was why Kurt was being so kind and generous: to lure Des into docility. If so, it was working. Yes, a brief burst of freedom might be exhilarating, but it wasn’t worth losing the good food and soft beds, the long showers and stack of books. Not worth losing the pleasure of Kurt’s company.

  Fuck. “What kind of man are you, Desmond? Weak and stupid as ever.”

  Kurt finished his call and, without even glancing at Des and the car, entered the office. When he came out a few moments later, a key with a plastic fob hung from his finger. “We’re lucky,” he said after opening the driver’s door. “That room’s vacant. Come on.”

  Des led the way because he remembered where the stairs were—hidden on the other side of the vending machine alcove. Cigarette butts and candy wrappers were strewn on the concrete, which smelled faintly of piss. “Was this dump any nicer when you stayed here?” Kurt asked.

  “Not really.” Larry always lodged them as cheaply as possibly, not so much to save money—he’d inherited loads from his parents—as to remain unobtrusive. He claimed that most employees of shitty motels weren’t paid enough to care what their guests were up to, which was probably true.

  The metal stairs rang under their combined tread, leading them to the walkway that ran outside the rooms. A sticky stain pulled at the soles of their shoes, and Kurt had to jiggle the lock on room 209 to make it open. Des braced himself for a jolt of unhappy memories, but when he stepped inside, nothing looked familiar except in the general way that all bland motel rooms looked alike.

  “Furniture’s too new,” Kurt muttered. “No boxes in there.” He checked the drawers anyway, and looked under the bed. Nothing, of course. He didn’t find anything under the bathroom sink either, or in the closet—well, except for a couple of disgruntled cockroaches.

  The whole enterprise seemed hopeless to Des. However lax the cleaning standards here might be, nobody would simply leave a box laying around for seventeen years. “I don’t see why you need me for this bit.”

  Kurt shot him a bad-tempered look, dug in his back trouser pocket, and pulled out something that resembled a thick credit card. He strode to the door, pushing wordlessly past Des on the way, and began waving the object near the wall.

  “What’s that?” asked Des.

  “Bureau equipment.”

  “What sort of equipment?”

  “It’s like a metal detector, only it reacts to magic.”

  Des whistled. The Bureau was better equipped than he’d imagined. But then, he’d never given much thought to the specifics of what Larry had been doing. “I thought magic was only in fairy tales, you know. Until I met Larry.”

  When Kurt reached the corner, he turned toward the next wall and brandished his gadget over a crookedly hung painting of a beach at sunset. “Magic per se doesn’t really exist. It’s just a shorthand way of referring to certain forces science hasn’t gotten around to investigating yet. It’s just as natural as electricity and gravity. And just like them, it has rules and limits.”

  “So anyone can use it?”

  “Sort of. Some people are way better at it, just like some people are better at playing basketball or singing opera.”

  “It’s a talent then.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe a range of talents, and different people can do different things.”

  Des considered this for a moment. It made sense. “You must’ve seen people use those talents in all sorts of terrible ways.”

  Kurt had made his way around a dresser and to the closet. He squeezed himself inside for a moment and then emerged to continue around the bathroom. “I guess. People use it in good ways too. Depends on the person. Or the situation.”

  “I’ve never heard much about the good in it.”

  “It’s there.”

  Des sat on the bed and watched Kurt complete his circuit of the room. Whatever the detector was meant to do, it didn’t do it. With a disappointed sigh, Kurt returned it to his pocket.

  “That’s it?” asked Des.

  “Some agents from the East Coast division will come by and tear this place apart, but I doubt they’ll find anything. Is there anywhere else on the premises Krane could have stashed the boxes?”

  “I don’t think so. He almost never left this room.”

  “So you were his errand boy too.”

  “Yes.” Des hadn’t minded that bit, especially because Larry always gave the impression that he was engaged in tasks much more important than fetching coffee or doing laundry.

  Kurt shook his head slowly as he looked around the room once more. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here. It’s too late to drive anywhere today, so we’ll leave in the morning. In the meantime, finding a laundromat would be a good idea.”

  “I used to do that for Larry too.”

  “You were a helpful guy.” Kurt said it neutrally, but his gaze was sharp.

  “I didn’t know what he was up to, not at first. And I thought… I thought what he was doing was the right thing. He was really good at talking in circles. He could make me believe anything.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Des bristled, folding his hands into fists. “It’s true. He was much cleverer than me, and—”

  “Bullshit. You’re a man with a soul, with a conscience. I can see that much. Which means you knew you were participating in evil. Deep down you knew, but you pretended not to. That kind of shit is worse than any monsters. I’ve hunted zombies. Trolls. A goddamn wendigo. Every one of them responsible for more deaths than you, but they kill because it’s their nature and they can’t do anything else. They’re like rabid dogs, and even if I need to destroy them, I don’t blame them. But a person who knows better and lets himself be led into wicked acts, who convinces himself he was only following orders? He’s worse than any of them.”

  It was a long speech for Kurt, who tended to be reticent, and he delivered it with his lips pulled back in a snarl. But then he took a step backward, visibly getting himself under control, and tightened his jaw. “Let’s go wash our clothes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They left Orlando before dawn, each with a paper cup of coffee. They’d also gra
bbed some fruit and pastries, which Kurt figured would hold off hunger for a while. They spoke very little while packing up and even once they were on the road. Silence had reigned since Kurt’s speech the previous afternoon, which was too bad: Kurt missed Des’s constant chatter. But he meant what he’d said about culpability, and he had no intention of softening the impact of those words. Des needed to hear that particular truth.

  Kurt drove all day, taking only short breaks for gas, snacks, and bathrooms. As they traveled the length of the panhandle, the flat greenness took on an unnatural aura in Kurt’s California-bred eyes. He was used to shades of brown and beige and sagey gray-greens. Even when the air in LA was at its worst, he was used to seeing angular mountains thrusting up from the horizon.

  “Where are we heading?” It was the first time Des had spoken in hours, and his tone was subdued.

  “Little town in Mississippi, southeast of Jackson. Roebuck Springs.”

  “How many days until we get there?”

  “You don’t remember the trip from when you went with Krane?”

  Des shook his head. “No. It’s like with motel rooms—if you spend enough time on the road, one trip blurs into the others.”

  Kurt believed that. He certainly couldn’t recall all the details of marching through jungles. There must have been differences in the landscape, but all he remembered was mud and misery. “We’ll be there tonight,” he said. “Late. It’s a pretty long haul.”

  “Don’t you get tired of driving?”

  “Not really. Anyway, you’re not taking a turn. Bureau wouldn’t approve.”

  “Because I might try to escape?”

  “No.” Kurt didn’t think he would, at least not this early in the trip. He was enjoying his freedom and getting nice lodging and food, so running made little sense. “They’re protective of their property. During training they made me spend hours behind the wheel.” He hadn’t considered that aspect necessary—Los Angeles had perfected his skills as a defensive and offensive driver already—but the Bureau had insisted. They made him do weapons training too, even though he was already far too proficient with a gun.