by Glenn Roug
husband wanted to do with his life. She answered my questions obediently but unenthusiastically. At last Doc Minus Two came back into the room and we could leave.
The first word that I managed to utter when we were outside the house and she had shut the door behind us was, "Boris?"
He nodded. "I had to think of a name for you fast. You got to admit it's a good fit."
I ignored the provocation. "McAlister, is that your name?"
"No. Do I look like the kind of guy who'd go around using his real name when impersonating an ATF agent?"
"What is your real name, then?"
"You're paying me to save your life, not so you could ask me deeply personal questions. Now, did you get anything out of the blonde or did you waste your time like I predicted you would?"
"She doesn't know anything. Thinks they killed him because he owed money, but doesn't even know who he borrowed it from. I think I did waste my time."
"Al, you're so useless if you had a third hand you'd need another pocket to put it in. No matter, I didn't do much better myself this time around. No traces of any surveillance device, nothing unusual in his desk drawers and work bag."
"So we came here for nothing."
He shook his head. "The perimeter is what interests me the most, anyway. I didn't have high expectations for what's in the house."
I sat in the Jeep for another twenty minutes as he was sniffing around in a small wood across the road from the widow's front door. Then I saw him climb up one of the trees. I was surprised at how agile he was despite his advanced years and rotund figure; like an aging orangutan. This time when he came back, he was not empty handed. I'm sure he would have had a look of victory on his face had he been able to show any emotion but tired disdain. He handed me a rolled-up magazine. It was in terrible shape, discolored and swollen from numerous soakings in the rain. It had leaves stuck to it. With difficulty, I made out the title BIRDING.
"Stuck in a branch. The police says he was shot from a moving truck, but I think the killer sat up in that tree. And now I know he was a birdwatcher, too."
"What makes you think this magazine was his?"
"It's the right age, from about a year ago, and besides, what birdwatcher would sit up in a tree right here in the city unless he was passing the time waiting to do something else?"
"Can you get fingerprints off that?"
"No chance. Even if he was stupid enough to leave them, they'd never survive for more than a few days."
"Any subscription name?"
"No, this is store bought. But it narrows it down. There aren't too many assassins out there who are also birdwatchers."
We drove back home. He remembered to remove his half a cigar from the spare tire and put it in his mouth and light it up again before he started the car. I was hoping he would forget. I would have. I tried to chat him up on the way but he was not responsive. He dropped me off not far from the cave, well inside the wood, and left without a word about when and where we were to meet again.
But in the morning Nat — who had left me alone with Makwa again and now came back to wake me up — handed me a phone I did not know he had on him. Doc Minus Two was on the line. "Mrs. Rossi's vanished."
"The widow?" I said half asleep. "What do you mean 'vanished'?"
"Gone. The neighbors called the cops after they heard screams last night. Everything inside the house was intact but the front door was wide open. She's nowhere to be found and doesn't answer her phone or e-mail. Is that vanished enough for you?"
"Shit. I thought they don't touch the relatives."
He sighed. "So did I. I think it's time we talked about your own family."
VI.
He came by and had me pack all my things and put them in the back of the Jeep, and then we went to one of the many pancake houses that dot the streets of Gatlinburg so I could buy him breakfast there. We sat in the corner, far from the crowd. I asked him how he came to learn about Mrs. Rossi's disappearance.
"I got connections and access to law enforcement databases, that's how. I was searching for something and saw the police report. What does it matter how I found out, anyway? The important thing is to figure out why she disappeared."
"Isn't it obvious? They found us." I spoke softly, almost in a whisper, as if the assassins were already in the restaurant with us.
Doc Minus Two was chewing on his omelet slowly. He did not order any pancake, just a succession of omelets and several cups of coffee and a glass of coke. He was calm, a quality which I must admit had kept me from going insane. I don't know how a person can keep calm after so many cups of coffee. I could only imagine that without them he would be in a coma. "If that were the case you wouldn't be alive now," he said slowly. "If they saw us at her house they'd have followed us back here and bumped you off. No, they don't know you were there."
"So what are we to make of the disappearance?"
He let his fork down for a moment and graced me with a brief eye contact. "We didn't go there as ourselves, remember? We went as the ATF. The perps must have heard about it and it startled them. Why does the ATF get involved, they asked themselves? Maybe the perps are a little worried now. We know they have FBI connections, but probably no similar thing with the ATF. Maybe they wanted to know what the ATF was after."
"In that case they should let her go pretty quick, I'd think. I asked her worthless questions."
"They may have realized it by now, but maybe letting her go isn't that simple. She might talk. And maybe there's another reason. I don't know. But I think we've inadvertently gotten to them. They think a new agency is now involved and they don't like it."
"And my family?"
He resumed his eating. "I don't know that they are in any real danger, but as a family member of one of the victims just disappeared, it is logical to assume that the killers had broken their cardinal rule of not touching relatives. At this point we must be prepared for anything, however unlikely."
That reminded me that I did not check my e-mail to see if K had replied to me. I wanted to find out whether or not she had kept her word to move my family to a safe house. Doc Minus Two pulled out a smaller version of the laptop I saw at his house earlier and let me log in. There was no e-mail from K. "I don't like this," I said. "Why doesn't she write back?"
"Because she doesn't want to tell you that she's done nothing whatsoever about your family."
I pushed away my plate. "Why?"
"Put yourself in her shoes. You have sixty six murders you need to solve, and nothing that links them together other than the victims were all on the same flight. She's like a deer caught in the headlights. Has no clue what to do or where to start." He bent forward to stress what he had to say next. "She has no real plan of action. She'd like the perps to make contact again so she could track them. But the only way that the perps are going to make contact again is by trying to get to you. You are the last remaining thing they want. And since they can't get to you, your family is the next best thing. Do you understand? The perps getting to your family is the only hope the FBI has got of these guys revealing themselves again. They want them to do it. If they move your family to a safe place, what would they have?"
Of course he was right. The FBI was not there just to protect me and my family; they needed to crack the case. "Is it safe to assume, then, that the FBI is camped outside my ex wife's home watching over whoever else may be watching?"
"I have no doubt about it."
"I must do something. I must go there."
"Two parties will be waiting for you there when you arrive. Party number one would shoot you on sight; party number two, if they get to you first, would pick you up again and extend your life by about a day until party number one figures out where you are and gets to you anyway. Even your ossified archeologist brain should realize these simple facts of life."
"I don't care, I have to do something. They'll only wait a few more days before trying
to kidnap my boy. I just know it."
"Alright, calm down. I've already done something."
"What?"
"I made some phone calls. You'll see soon enough."
He would not say anymore. I thought it best, anyway. Deep inside I did not want to know what he was doing, and preferred the vague sense of security that my family was going to be in good hands to a precise knowledge of the plan, which would open the door to doubt. We hit the road right after breakfast. This time he stuck to the highway and I knew we were leaving Tennessee. It was not easy sitting in the open, windshield-less vehicle for hours on end of highway driving. Even though the noisy, rattling machine rarely did more than fifty five miles an hour, it felt like sitting on the roof of a corrugated metal hut during a hurricane. After ten hours of nonstop driving and little conversation, we stopped at a gas station in West Virginia. I could barely feel my face, even though I swaddled it with a towel from one of the bags. I stepped outside the Jeep and gathered the courage to tell Doc Minus Two that I would not be climbing back into the vehicle today no matter what.
"We need to set up camp for the night, anyway," he said.
"I'm going to a motel."
"Do you have a fake ID?"
"No, but we can book the room on your name."
"I never do that."
"With a fake ID I meant. Someone like you, you must have one."
"I never burn my fake IDs on something as trivial as a motel stay. No, I carry my motel with me." He pointed to the back of the Jeep, where a flat canvas bag lay on the metal floor.
I did