by Matt Coleman
She was an older woman with the haggard look of a journalistic veteran. Glasses hung around her neck and another pair sat shoved into her tangle of brown hair. She wore a pantsuit neither in fashion nor outdated. She carried a small purse and looked to be a shade healthier than first impressions indicated. She projected a persona of the perfect person to blend in, sneak in, or push in. Sameer got the distinct impression she broke her fair share of stories. Seamus spoke reverently of her. He didn’t necessarily like her, but sure as hell tried to learn from her.
“Sameer? Margaret Golding.” She held her hand out in a greeting. “You can call me Meg. Never let your husband, but you don’t work for me so have at it.”
Sameer stood and shook her hand. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Of course. Anything to help. We’re all worried sick.” As they both took a seat at the fountain, Meg patted Sameer on the knee. “I’m pretty sure we met at last year’s holiday party, right?”
Sameer smiled and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We did.”
Meg grimaced. “I was afraid of that. I get drunker than your boozy uncle at holiday parties. I apologize for not remembering sooner.”
“Yes. You were very intoxicated. If I remember correctly, you called me Sammy Atari.” Sameer winced and hung his head. “I mean, no worries.” He looked back up at Meg. “So you can’t remember anything Seamus might be working on?”
Meg cocked her head. “Nothing specific, no. Truth of the matter is, I should be calling him on the carpet for not producing. His last piece came in a while back.”
Sameer frowned. “I don’t understand. He works constantly.”
“I agree.” She nodded. “Fitzy works hard. But the product’s not there. He got lost down a rabbit hole. Happens to all of us at some point or other.”
“I had an aunt whose every saying related in one way or another to donkeys. Everything was about a donkey. But never rabbits. She did have one about a donkey hole, but I feel as if it might be very different.” Sameer shook his head. “I’m not familiar with the phrasing.”
“A wild goose chase of sorts.” She smiled wistfully. “Every journalist finds a story that piques your curiosity to a point of obsession. You get lost in it. But some of those stories never actually yield stories. You can’t tie up the loose ends enough to write a piece. Nobody will go on record. None of the leads pan out. It happens.”
“And what was Seamus’ rabbit hole?”
“Fitzy got sucked up in a cold case. Back in the 80s, a reporter named Carnie—not his real name. You know how we have to nickname everybody. But anyway, Carnie went and got himself killed. He got shot while visiting a prostitute. It got written off as solicitation gone wrong or maybe a hook and crook. But never solved. Funny thing though, Carnie took his daughter with him.”
Meg frowned at the thought and continued, “What kind of guy takes his daughter to see a whore? I knew Carnie a little. Good guy. I never bought it.” She shrugged. “Neither did Fitzy. He started looking into the old story and found out Carnie stood on the banks of some deep shit. He’d been digging around into police corruption and crooked politicians. Hookers and drugs and murder. Nasty stuff. Stuff which, according to your husband, continues right up to this day.”
Sameer raised his eyebrows. “Is he right?”
Meg shrugged again. “I think so, yeah. I mean, we’ve all picked up rumors. But nobody can get a story. Fitzy didn’t fare any better. He chased and he chased. He even claimed a friend on the force helping him dig. But in the end, I told him to drop it. At least back burner it. I needed print.”
“But he still didn’t bring in stories.” Sameer shook his head. “So was he still working on the same case?”
“I suspected. But the most recent notes I found were about a little sub community of filmmakers in town. Bunch of urban kids making documentaries and art films. I kept waiting on a story about it, but I never got one.”
Sameer sat up straighter. “Do you have those notes?”
Meg nodded and fished a folded stack of papers out of her purse. “I photocopied everything on his desk for you.” She gave Sameer the stack, a haphazard array of scribbled notes, many on Post-its or torn scraps of paper, all Xeroxed onto white copy paper. Meg laughed. “Sorry. Bit of a mess. I’m afraid it is our way. We journalists,” she tapped her temple, “we’ve got it all organized up here, but everywhere else? Bit of a mess.” She placed a hand on Sameer’s shoulder. “Anything else we can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Yes. Thank you. I will.” Nodding to her repeatedly, Sameer clutched the papers to his chest. “And thank you for meeting me and bringing me these. I’m sure they will help.” He glanced at the line forming at the falafel truck. “Don’t let me keep you.”
Meg pointed toward the truck with her head. “Let me buy you lunch?”
Sameer cocked his head. “Oh. The last time I had falafel, I was subsequently bamboozled out of eighty-seven dollars by a street urchin.” He shook a finger. “Now, mind you, it was no fault of the falafel. However, any time I am to eat it now, I am reminded of—” Sameer smiled. “No. Thank you. I ate pie.”
“Well, good for you, kid.”
The two parted ways with Meg getting in line for lunch and Sameer walking back toward where he parked his car, near the Hill Street Cafe. Almost to his car, at the edge of Dollar Hill, a voice called out to him. “Hey! You the one looking for the reporter?”
Sameer spun around to find a homeless man huddled up on a bus stop bench. He almost trotted making his way toward the man. “Yes. Yes, I am. Do you know something? Did you see him? I can show you a picture.”
The man waved off Sameer’s efforts to retrieve the picture from his pocket. “I don’t need a picture. I seen him. How many of those dollars you got left?”
Sameer fumbled around in his pockets and came up with twenty-one dollars in fives and ones. “Here. It’s all I have left.”
The man eagerly accepted the wad of cash and counted the bills as he spoke. “Yeah, the guy you want to see is named Booker. He’s down and out. Like me. But he’s a friendly type. Always running to help out and shit. Word has it Booker helped out a young lady some years back.” He jerked a thumb back toward the tangle of government buildings. “And some of those types didn’t much like it.”
Sameer shook his head. “Why not?”
The man shrugged. “Ask Booker. The young lady worked as a—I believe the preferred term is a sex worker. And, if I ain’t mistaken, she was sex working for one of those suits. Booker got her out of a tight spot and your fella damn sure wanted to hear all about it.”
“Where can I find Booker?”
“There’s this group of guys who make movies. They hang out in a coffee shop, I think. Somewhere in Harper’s Village. In Midtown. But they’re always down here shooting footage. Booker let them put him in some shots sometimes. He wouldn’t try to milk them like the rest of us, so they grew to like him. One of those guys helped the reporter find Booker. Must’ve been where he heard about the story. Those guys might know where Booker’s been hanging his hat these days. I ain’t seen him down here in a few weeks.”
Chapter 8
Cary stuck to the road. Beat the cold pavement with her bare feet. The backwoods farm road curved around bends in two-lanes, but at least the county paved this side of the tracks. The internal clock on the backs of Cary’s eyelids read almost four in the morning. No one would be picking up hitchhikers. In fact, the only car she might encounter would be the Ford Taurus that carried her out to the bridge. Dick and Dicker would have surely gone back to it. The thought made her pick up her pace. Going back into the rough ground of the woods would be murder. She sensed the slick warmth of blood on the soles of her feet.
Cary couldn’t decide which she’d rather have: shoes or her phone. Or a bottle of water. Maybe whiskey. As she rounded a corner, she saw salvation. Other than the whiskey, she could find everything she needed. The big golden sign with beautiful green letters: Dollar Genera
l. Cheap shoes, water, bandages, and a prepaid phone. Halle-fucking-lujah. Because Cary did have three thousand dollars in cash in her jacket pocket.
Approaching the Dollar General, she counted two cars. Good sign. Even if closed, someone in there would open up for a hundred spot. A beat-up truck sat parked over to one side in what looked like an employee spot. In the other car—a Civic—a single driver carried on an animated phone conversation.
Cary doubted the DG allowed bare feet. She hoped the clerk would be too tired to notice. She tried to stroll in as casually as possible, making a beeline for a row of shoes and socks. They had some knock-off Converse and a two-pack of socks with cats on them. She hugged them to her chest and wound her way to the first aid aisle, snagging a box of Scooby-Doo bandaids and some hydrogen peroxide. She added a bottle of orange Gatorade from a nearby cooler on her way to the counter. The sleepy-eyed clerk rang her up. Cary had fished out a twenty to keep from raising any eyebrows.
Taking her change, Cary asked sweetly, “Can I use your restroom?”
He didn’t speak but pointed back toward a corner of the store where Cary spotted the familiar male and female silhouettes. She thanked him and started back, only to stop at a display of cell phones.
“Are these pre-paid?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
She grabbed a phone and a card promising sixty minutes of “airtime.” Another couple of twenties later she padded off to the bathroom to bandage her feet and try to remember anyone’s phone number.
In the bathroom, she guzzled the Gatorade and perched on the sink to doctor her feet. They were a mash of cuts and raspberries. Cary dabbed peroxide onto them with a paper towel and slapped on a patchwork of bandaids. She eased on the socks and shoes and whimpered at the ceiling.
The silence of a Dollar General at four in the morning has few rivals. There are many noisier libraries. It’s the stillness of an antique store mid-morning. Or a car ride after an argument. So when voices started up at the counter, Cary clearly made out the gruff snarls of her detective friends. She scanned the bathroom for windows, found none, and whispered a curse into the mirror.
Cary shoved her phone and the “airtime” card in her pocket and crouched down to open the door a crack. She peeked out and noticed the trail of bloody footprints leading right to her. “Balls,” she muttered. In a duck walk, she made her way along the back wall of the store until she came to an emergency exit. In college, Cary had worked in a little store like this one where she had learned to use the curved mirrors in the corners to catch shoplifters. She found the two men at the counter, and she watched as the dweeby clerk pointed back toward the bathroom. Her time was up.
One hard shove into the emergency door and an alarm blared throughout the store. Cary ducked around a counter and slouched into a sitting position where she could monitor the mirrors. Dick bolted for the back of the store and didn’t slow down before exploding out the back exit. But the lead detective stayed. He worked his way down an aisle in a sweep of the store.
During Casey Trubody, Survivalist Trainer’s lesson entitled “Evading Capture,” Cary’s brother claimed “hiding is never about finding somewhere they won’t look; it’s about making them look somewhere you aren’t.”
Cary scanned her aisle, full of cookout and camping supplies, and found a fire starter log and a box of long matches. She leaped up and grabbed one of each and moved to an aisle farther away from the detective. Crouching and watching the mirrors, she worked her way from aisle to aisle until she came to a shelf of aerosol bug sprays. She ripped open the log, placing it on the shelf beneath the sprays, and lit match after match until she had a good flame going.
The detective worked his way down an aisle, coming to the back of the store before starting back up the next. He had just rounded the corner when the first can went. The dull thud spun and knocked cans off into the floor. The racket drew his attention with a jolt. The detective jogged along the back of the store toward the noise. Cary took the opportunity to sprint for the front doors.
She stumbled into the parking lot rooting for any escape. The Civic owner still chatted on his phone. Her choices were pretty limited at this point, so she ran for the car, whipped open the passenger side door, and slunk down into the floorboard of the Civic.
The driver jumped and spun with his back against his door and one hand outstretched toward Cary. He fumbled with his phone but managed to catch it and stutter out, “I gotta call you back.” He stared Cary down as she begged him with her eyes. After a long twenty seconds of shared silence, he asked, “You gonna tell me what the hell it is you’re doing?”
Cary shrunk into the floor but put up both hands beseechingly. “I know. I know. This appears crazy, and I’m sorry. But please, please listen. Give me one minute. Please.”
He frowned but nodded once.
Cary nodded rapidly and stammered. “Th—there are two men. Cops. They th—think I’m somebody else or something. I don’t know. But they’re trying to kill me. I swear. I just need a ride to anywhere but here. If I get out of this car, they’ll kill me.”
The driver glanced toward the store, swallowed hard, and flashed a quick look back at Cary. “Cops, huh?”
Cary nodded.
“And they tried to kill you?”
“Yes. They shot at me.”
The driver glowered at her. “And your answer to how to keep your ass safe from some killer cops was to climb into a car with a black man at four in the morning?”
Cary grimaced. “I am beginning to acknowledge the flaws in it as a plan.”
The driver shook his head and thrashed around. “Girl, you gonna get me killed.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Please,” Cary pleaded. “One time-once, my—my brother,” she stammered, “my brother, he told me if I need help there are certain types of people to look for. He said I would know them because their heads would be on swivels and their startled posture would be protective. He said to look for a mom, a cop, a soldier, or an older sibling. I don’t know if you’re one of those, but when I jumped in the car you reached out, you know, like you were reaching out in a protective manner. Or maybe you were about to punch me. I don’t know for sure. But all I can do in this moment is to trust my brother. You see, he used to take me out into the woods and train me to survive in extreme circumstances such as a bear attack or a raging forest fire.” Cary was nodding rapidly and begging with her eyes.
The driver glanced back over his shoulder. “There ain’t a bear out there, is there?”
Cary shook her head.
He nodded slowly.
Cary winced. “Are you—are you…one of those people? A soldier, maybe, or a—”
The driver sighed and put the car in drive. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m one of those people.” He stopped short of pulling out. Frozen, he stared toward the store.
Cary kept folding herself into the floorboard. “What? What is it?”
The man spoke without moving his lips. “One ‘uh ‘em’s ‘alkin’ o’er here.”
“Shit.”
The driver rolled his window down. “Morning, detective. Can I help you?”
Cary recognized a familiar voice. “You see a girl run out of here?”
“Yes, sir. I did. Went in right before you all. Left in a hurry. Running up the road toward the tracks.”
Everything stalled out for a moment. Gravel crunched and rolled beneath the detective’s feet. The driver’s Adam’s apple worked up and down as he tried to swallow. More gravel churned. Steps. Steps. Steps. The detective crept closer. A flashlight clicked to life. The beam swept into the car, past the driver, wild. He hadn’t reached the window yet. She lunged for the door handle.
Police sirens wailed, droning in from a short distance away. The driver instinctively peered over his shoulder. The detective mumbled, “Jesus.” The gravel sounds coughed quickly, moving away.
The driver eased forward, looking down at Cary. “What kind of cop runs from the sound of sirens?”
Chapter 9
Johnna couldn’t tell when her eyes were open or shut. Her throat felt like a pinched straw. She couldn’t swallow and breathing took effort. Consciousness danced around her and left, toying with her, playing Hokey-Pokey, she thought. Her mind was a jar of dirt, with thoughts wiggling to the surface like worms every now and then, only to disappear again into the mush. Her mom brushing her hair in the mornings. The way her grandmother used to talk about Johnna’s childhood dance class. Hearing about the job interview. The excitement in Cary’s eyes—the look of someone who believed in her.
Officer Reynard had crammed Johnna into this dark space—turned her into the ventriloquist dummy folded into a suitcase. Combing around stung like digging in a tub of ice for a cold drink. Her fingers tingled numb and everything floated off, foreign and dreamy. Her hair was a skein of ribbons cascading over her face. Her breasts swollen lumps. The floor puffed up like the hair of her first boyfriend. Long before she came out. They were middle school sweethearts.
Johnna shook off the memory and tried again to focus. Carpet. All around, carpet. Dark, cramped. Movement. She sensed movement. It wasn’t merely the rushing woosh-woosh-woosh in her head. She was in a car. A trunk.
She initially found nothing around her. Even if there had been, her eyes didn’t work and her fingers were balloon animals. Sleep kept sneaking up on her. Dreams. Dreams of falling—of Cary—of snakes—of Reynard choking, choking, choking. She woke with a start and groped around again until her hand hit something metal. Slender. Plastic handle. A screwdriver. She could work with that.
She gripped and re-gripped the screwdriver. Practiced poking and stabbing and slicing. On a slice, she scraped the metal of the roof of the trunk. It woke something inside her and she went back to the roof, scratching and chiseling at the roof until she got dizzy. Save it, Johnna, she thought, almost aloud. Maybe aloud. Maybe loud. Too loud. She brandished the screwdriver in front of her, ready to stab up and out. Her eyes fluttered. There Cary stood again and her childhood dog ran up and her mother smiled and the dreams reclaimed her.