Don't Kill The Messenger (13 page)

One by one, the details filter in. Names, places, history, directions, and the all-important detail of the mission—what I must do and for whom. The pain and the message continue for a full two minutes, which feels like forever to me. I silently wonder if there will ever come a time when I have accepted enough assignments that they can be sent to me without the accompanying pain and suffering.

At last it subsides, and I am able to raise my head a little. “Are you all right?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes. It still hurts, but I’ll be fine.”

“Another assignment?”

“Another assignment. And again with some urgency. We have about twelve hours of driving, and only about fifteen hours before everything happens.”

“So where are we going?” she asks.

“Wyandotte, Pennsylvania,” I reply.

A curious look comes to her face. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“I suppose it’s not terribly far from where your family lives in Ohio. Wyandotte is practically a ghost town. A natural disaster drove off almost everyone eighteen years ago. Now, only one family still lives there, and they’re the ones we have to help.”

“Why? What’s going to happen?”

“In fifteen hours, their house is going to collapse.”

Chapter 9
 

“Fifteen hours?” Rebecca repeats. “That’s not much time. I think we should fly there instead of driving.”

“I’ve told you, flying is too risky …”

“Even if the flight is delayed by twelve hours, we’ll still get there in plenty of time. I just don’t want to see us get there too late.”

I begin to pack up the few things I’ve brought into the room with me, and she does likewise. Maybe this time it’s best if I put aside my prejudice and just trust the airlines to get us there. “You’re right,” I tell her. “Fogle wants me to call him before I leave town. Go ahead and get ready to go. I’ll take care of this.”

She goes to the bathroom, and I dial the cell phone number that’s on the business card the detective gave me last night. I feel bad for calling at this hour, but business is business. After four rings, a tired-sounding Fogle picks up the phone. “Hello?”

“Detective, it’s Tristan Shays. I’m sorry for calling you so early, but you asked me to call you before I got on my way, and I need to be going.”

He tries to compose himself and speak coherently and professionally. “Is there a particular reason you’re wanting to leave so early?”

“Business meeting out of state,” I answer. “With your kind approval, of course.”

He hesitates a moment. “You’re still a person of interest in this matter. The investigation is ongoing, and it would be better for all parties if you stayed in Atlanta for another couple of days.”

No, no, you can’t be serious.
“That’s … going to create something of a hardship, Detective. I can come back here if I’m needed, but I’m really counting on your indulgence to give me leave to travel.”

“Shays, it’s 6:00 in the morning. I’m still in bed here. What you’re asking for … it’ll take department approval, and that takes time. I need you to sit tight until I clear this with Division.”

“Isn’t there any way you can expedite this? Please, it’s very important.”

Irritation begins to creep into his voice. “And I’m telling you this isn’t something we can do right here and now. End of discussion. Are we gonna have a problem here?”

Trying not to betray too much emotion in my voice, I reply, “No, Detective, no problem. I understand. Please give me a call on my cell phone when you have the authorization. It’s urgent, vitally urgent. Thank you, Detective.”

At this moment, I truly wish there was a way to slam down the receiver on a cellular phone. I have to settle for a fierce punching of the END button, after which I shout out “Shit!” loudly enough that it draws Rebecca out of the bathroom.

“What?” she asks, concerned. “What did he say?”

“He wants me to stay in town.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m a ‘person of interest.’ That means they need access to me.”

“For how long?” she says.

“Maybe a couple of hours. Maybe a couple of days. In the meantime, the clock is ticking in Pennsylvania.”

She approaches me. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna go,” I answer. “Tell me something as my legal advisor: On a scale of slap-on-the-wrist to balls-in-a-vise, how bad is leaving town when I’ve been asked not to?”

Rebecca thinks about it for a moment. “Closer to wrist than balls. You’re not currently under arrest, but you are still subject to police jurisdiction. Their contact with us is by cell phone, which goes wherever we go. For all they know, we’re still in Atlanta. If they call and ask you to come in, we can bullshit and stall for time while we head back here. This could work.”

“By going with me,” I remind her, “you’re assisting a fugitive.”

“Only a semi-fugitive,” she corrects. “You’re under restricted liberty.”

“So you’re okay with that?”

“I’m in this now. You go, I go. I’ll finish getting ready. You get us some airline tickets.”

“Umm, yeah … about that …”

“What?” she says. “What about that?”

“I kind of put up a fuss on the phone when Fogle told me not to leave town.”

“How much of a fuss?”

“Enough of a fuss that I imagine the next thing he did was call security at the airport and told them not to let me fly out of here.”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“No, but I’m sure enough that if we risked it, we’d probably find ourselves in real custody. So it’s you and me with the wind blowing through our hair again, I think.”

She shoots me a quick suspicious glance. “This isn’t just a ploy to keep from flying, is it? So you can have your way?”

“No, I swear. I was all geared up for a window seat and a little bag of peanuts. The whole works.”

“All right, because if I find out you play little passive-aggressive mind games, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”

Within fifteen minutes, we are both ready to go. Fortunately, the hotel has brown-bag breakfasts in the lobby for business travelers in a hurry, and that’s us. We grab two and head to the parking garage to get the Sebring. Rebecca offers to take the first driving shift, and I instruct her on how to get onto the interstate northbound. We have a very long day ahead, and we both know it.

As the miles pass, a thought comes to her and she says to me, “This may be a stupid question, but when you get these messages, these assignments, they give you all this information—who it’s for, where they are, how to get there. Wouldn’t it make more sense just to give you a phone number, so you can call them and warn them, instead of doing all this traveling?”

“Not a stupid question at all,” I reply. “And an idea that I had too, early on. I tried it once. But imagine this: You’re at work last week, and you get a phone call from a man you’ve never met, someone whose name is unfamiliar, whose voice you don’t recognize. He tells you to quit your job, pack your things, leave Key West immediately, and go back home to Ohio. What would you think?”

“Psyyyy-cho,” she answers.

“Exactly. A voice on the telephone is quick, but it carries no weight, even if I claim to be someone the person knows. Think about it: What was it about my message to you that held the most weight?”

“The fact that you showed up there. That you drove 1,200 miles to give that message to someone you’d never met.”

“There you go. This is why I have to be there. Why they have to look at my eyes and hear my words and choose to believe me or not, with me standing there in front of them.”

“So … what happened to the one you tried to call on the phone?”

It takes me several very pained seconds of looking away as I search for the right words to say. In the end, all I can come up with is “Nothing good.” It ends the conversation in a hurry.

For about an hour, the radio is the only sound we share. The memory of past failures still stings, and she realizes that she has touched a nerve. I didn’t mean to make her feel bad, but there is no easy way to dismiss what transpired without inviting more conversation about the past, and neither one of us is ready for that right now.

After that silent hour, she makes the decision to turn off the radio and change the subject to the matter at hand. “I keep thinking about Wyandotte, where we’re going,” she says. “I know I’ve heard the name before, which is strange, because you said it’s been abandoned for years, right?”

“
Almost
abandoned,” I specify. “Most of the people left there eighteen years ago. A number of families stayed for a while, but it got to be too much for them and they left too. Now only one family is left there.”

“What drove everybody away? You mentioned a natural disaster. Was it a fire, an earthquake?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Usually, I’m given exactly as much information as I need to find my subject and convince them that what I have to tell them is true.”

“Who’s your subject this time?”

“Mr. and Mrs. William Harbison,” I reply.

“And their house is going to collapse?”

“So I’m told.”

“God, that sucks. Well, maybe this will be the incentive they need to finally move out of town, just let it go.”

“You think so?” I ask with a knowing smile. “Let me ask you something: Why would you live in a town all by yourself after everybody else moved out?”

She thinks about it. “I don’t know. Maybe it was a family home for generations. Maybe they’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“But you’d agree that their insistence on staying isn’t just random or even casual, right? Something’s keeping them there.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So you see we may have a difficult task on our hands.”

Hour follows hour, and Rebecca’s first shift at the wheel ends, giving me a chance to drive again. I catch her looking over at me from time to time as I’m driving, but she’s remaining curiously quiet, especially given the look on her face. Eventually, as I make my way onto Interstate 77, I have to know. “What’s that look?”

She plays it very innocent. “What look?”

“The look you’ve been giving me for about ten minutes, every time you think I’m not looking at you. That sort of knowing half-smile.”

“Can’t a girl look at a guy?”

“Sure. But there seems to be something behind that look. Something you want to say, maybe?”

“I was just remembering last night,” she says. “The good parts, I mean.”

“They
were
good.”

She reaches over and takes my hand in hers. I make no effort to resist. “I guess I just wanted to thank you for being with me that way.”

“Well, you’re welcome. It was something I wanted too. I just … couldn’t be the one to ask.”

“That’s why I asked. Your hesitance caught me by surprise. It was …”

“Please don’t say ‘refreshing,’” I interrupt. “I’m not sure I’d know what to do with refreshing.”

“Then how about surprising?” she asks. “Because that’s what it was. Guys aren’t supposed to be hesitant. They’re supposed to be sex-crazed animals who don’t give a damn about the girl’s feelings or needs.”

Her words sadden me. “Is this what you’re used to?”

She nods. “Too often, yeah. But that wasn’t you. From the start, you were so focused on me, on what I wanted and needed. Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. Just who I am, I suppose.”

“Well, it took me by surprise, and I liked it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect it from you.” She hesitates a moment, then voices a question. “Tristan … last night wasn’t your first time, was it?”

I give an embarrassed laugh. “No, it wasn’t my first time. As romantic as that scenario is, I’m sorry to say that my chastity is long since compromised. Why would you think it was my first time? Was I that bad?”

“Oh, hell no. Far from it. There was just something in your manner—the respect you showed me. It …” Then it hits her, and a new look of wonder lights her face. “Oh my God …” she says quietly.

“What?”

“I just realized what it really is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve never had sex before with someone you didn’t love.”

I search for words to dismiss the idea, but they don’t come. I want to deny it and I don’t even know why. It feels like an accusation, though I know that’s not what she intends. “No. I haven’t.”

My face falls, maybe with embarrassment, I’m not sure. But she sees it and tries at once to reconcile. “Tristan, you don’t have to feel defensive or anything like that. I just … didn’t know, and didn’t expect that to be the case. It’s just one of many pleasant surprises I’m finding out about you in this time together. I didn’t mean to force a confession out of you.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, half meaning it. “I just didn’t think it’d be that obvious.”

“It’s not obvious. I figured it out because I’m getting to know you. And I like the things I’m learning. The reason I had sex with you …” She corrects herself. “The reason I made love with you last night is because there’s something good and powerful in you that speaks to me. It makes me want to be near you. It makes me want to stay with you on this errand we’re on. I just hope I didn’t seduce you into compromising your principles by being intimate with me.”

“Rebecca, it’s … it’s not like that. You didn’t get me drunk and take advantage of me when I was passed out. I knew what I was doing. But now, knowing what you know about me, I don’t want you to be overwhelmed by what it all might mean.”

She nods in understanding. “That’s the thing. I’m still not sure what it all might mean. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of making up the rules as we go along. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or—hell—even today. For all we know, that house might fall on us too.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I say vehemently.

“That’s very kind and very noble of you, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. We still have a lot of hours of driving, and then a lot to do in Pennsylvania, I suspect.”

“Probably.”

“What are you going to do if they don’t believe you?”

“Try my best to convince them, I guess. And if that doesn’t work, when the time comes, I’ll grab the husband and you grab the wife, and we’ll physically drag them out of that house before it falls on top of them.”