Knowing (31 page)

“Good or bad?”

“Both.”

She nodded. “Figures.”

Before the sun rose, Jane found a twenty-four-hour drive-thru and purchased a large coffee and breakfast burritos for both of them. Pulling over in the parking lot, she checked the map that Hank left on the passenger seat. Sheldon Springs was pretty easy to navigate since the town was a blip on the map and there were nothing but ranches and a few small family farms surrounding it. If Monroe lived outside of Sheldon Springs in the middle of BFE, as John Burroughs stated, it shouldn’t be difficult to determine which house belonged to him.

Driving west, they cleared the town within five minutes and passed several miles of raw land with “For Sale” signage. The sun’s morning golden rays illuminated the passenger side mirror, casting fresh light on the new day. After half a mile more, she spied a long dirt road that led to a modest home in the distance. Jane checked the mailbox for any sign of Monroe’s name but the box was blank and the only mail inside was addressed to “Resident.” Looking around the vast, empty skyline, Jane figured it was a worth a shot to roll down the dirt road and check it out. But as she inched down the road and came up on the house, the scene that unfolded was shocking.

Standing on the screened-in front porch was a skinny man in his late twenties. He was staring with terrified eyes at the van and in his mouth was the business end of his .45.

Jane and Harlan got out of the van as the skinny man kicked open the screen door on the front porch and stood on the top step. He frantically moved the pistol to his temple.

“I’ll pull the trigger before you do!” he yelled at them.

Jane put her hands up. “No guns here. We’re not here to hurt you.”

Harlan seemed to be transfixed by the guy. “It’s okay.” He took a step toward him. “
Capisci
?”

The man’s mouth dropped open. He let the pistol fall to his side and took his finger off the trigger. He never took his eyes off Harlan the entire time, hypnotized and unable to speak.

“What’s going on?” Jane quietly asked.

“It’s okay, Jane,” Harlan told her without turning away from the man.

The man lay the gun on the ground. “Oh, my God.” He crouched on the dirt, looking up at Harlan. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus.” He gently walked toward Harlan, tears welling in his eyes.

“Are you Monroe?” Jane carefully asked him.

He was still focused only on Harlan. “Uh-huh. That’s what they call me.” He looked Harlan up and down. “Oh, God, man. How’d you do it?”

“How’d he do what?” Jane asked.

Monroe glanced her way. “Who are you?”

“Jane. How’d he do what?”

Monroe returned his comfortable yet spellbound stare toward Harlan. “He’s in a body like the postcard.”

In a body like the postcard.
Oh, hell, Jane pondered. It appeared that Monroe was indeed Gabe’s former crazy sidekick. She watched him carefully. He was wiry and the flyaway strands of brown hair on his head stood up like spikes, making him look like the cartoon version of someone who had either been electrocuted or startled. His olive drab t-shirt hung on his body as if his shoulders were a wire hanger barely able to support the weight of the material. A pair of heavy canvas pants were held up with a belt that was a little too big to fit through the loops, causing it to twist and bend as it circled his waist. On his feet, Monroe wore regulation military boots that probably still had the sands of the Middle East and mysterious territories embedded in the stitching and laces. While peculiar, his personality was not offensive to Jane. Monroe wasn’t all there but he didn’t belong in a mental institution. He was what most families refer to as “pleasantly eccentric and harmless.” His green eyes were alive with anticipation and welcoming. But they were also dimmed with sadness and memories that Jane figured lay in the suburbs of his mind. Knowing the gritty life he and Gabriel led, she was certain Monroe had seen and done it all. And while the stain of it remained, it hadn’t yet plucked the last remnant of humanity from his heart.

“What do you mean ‘in a body like the postcard,’ Monroe?” Jane carefully asked.

Monroe smiled, fear completely absent. “Come on in, I’ll show you.” He turned, leaving his gun on the ground.

“Hey!” Jane called to him, pointing to the weapon. “You forgot something.”

He playfully slapped his forehead. “Ah! Right!” He retrieved it. “I’m just so in awe, man.” He tripped up the few stairs that led them into the screened front porch.

Jane and Harlan followed Monroe through the front porch and into the main house. It was a modest two-story abode, packed to the gills with odd pieces of mismatched furniture, boxes, documents strewn every which way and several banks of computers that were either turned off or else featured a screensaver. One such screensaver was a breathtaking photograph from NASA of the Orion Nebula. Another screensaver showed a valley on Mars where curious outcroppings rose in the distance. A third screensaver was another NASA shot of the moon, showing the wheel markings left over from a past mission to the planet. On the far wall, Monroe had spray-painted, “
Be difficult. Choose Freedom
,” in yellow and red paint. Instead of pictures on the wall, Monroe apparently preferred cork pegboards. They were everywhere, and on each board was a series of postcards from all over the world. Staring at the mass of them, Jane thought it looked like a frenzied way to display your vacation shots and world adventures.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” Monroe said. “Please come in and have a seat.” He offered them a seat on a tan corduroy couch that was in desperate need of both deep cleaning and new springs. When he spoke, he focused on Harlan more than Jane. “You want some water, coffee, tea, absinthe?

“
Absinthe
?” Jane asked.

“Yeah,” Monroe said, breathlessly.

“No, thanks,” Jane said. “Kinda early in the a.m. for that.”

“I got some weed. Never too early for that.”

“We’re good,” Jane assured him. “Back to that postcard—?”

“Oh! Yeah!” Monroe frantically searched through two desks full of boxes and piles of papers. “I keep it in a special place,” he excitedly offered, opening and closing drawers in his search. “But the special places keep moving, ya know? Has that ever happened to you?”

Jane could see him spiraling out of control. “Slow down, Monroe. It’s okay. We’re not in any rush here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I gotta show it to ya,” he mumbled, continuing to lift up stacks of documents in his quest. “Mary had a little lamb…” he said to himself, as if the words were a comforting mantra. “Mary had a little lamb…Ah!” he shouted, crossing over to a wall across the room. Removing the pegboard, he uncovered a metal plate with a lock. He brought a pick out of his pant’s pocket and expertly picked the lock, opening the metal plate and bringing out the few contents from the secreted hole.

“You always carry a pick in your pocket?” Jane asked Monroe, as he returned.

“Of course,” he said offhandedly.

“Why don’t you have the key to that lock?”

“It got stolen when I had a break in. I have a lot of break ins. I’m real popular,” he said with a strange guffaw. “Ha! Not really!” he quickly added as he started to rock back and forth.

Harlan leaned toward Jane. “We got a key in my bag of tricks.”

“Ha!” Monroe shouted. “Bag of tricks! I like that.”

“No, he’s right, Monroe. It’s an old key but we don’t know what it belongs to.”

“Well,” Monroe replied, still rocking back and forth, “I’m sure it doesn’t fit that lock. I ain’t accusing you two of stealing it from me! I wouldn’t do that!”

Jane reached over to him and touched his arm. He jumped as if he’d been shocked. “It’s okay, Monroe,” Jane assured him.

“You can’t touch me like that!” Monroe stated, pulling away from Jane.

“I’m sorry.”

“I got triggers, you know? You gotta watch out for them. My mind’s got a lot of buried land mines.” He continued to rock back and forth gently, staring at the postcards in his hands. “No, I know, I know, I know. You don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t have it in you.”

“Have what in me?” Jane asked.

For the first time since their short meeting, Monroe made eye contact with Jane that was meaningful. “The…ev….ev….evil,” he stammered.

“You’re right. I don’t. And neither does Harlan,” she said, pointing toward him.

Monroe smiled broadly. “
Harlan
? Ha! Oh, wow. What a name, man. Nice to meet you, Harlan.” He held his hand out to Harlan who grasped it tightly. Monroe didn’t let go as he stared into Harlan’s eyes with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. “Oh, God, man,” he whispered as tears welled in his eyes again. “I miss you. It’s a fucking jungle out here without you.” He tried to manage another smile. “
Capisci
?”

Harlan never took his eyes off Monroe and seemed to understand him. “
Capisci
.”

“What do you have there?” Jane asked, pointing to the postcards.

“Oh, yeah! Right! You gotta remind me sometimes more than once. I have a little problem, you know? My head? It’s all jumbled. Too many different people hidin’ out in there, you know? Ha! But I know I can trust you. I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t of told me about you.”

“I’m not following you,” Jane said calmly, doing everything possible to not rile him.

“I’m not following you either! I’ve been right here the whole time! But that’s not to say they ain’t out there, ya know? Followin’ us? Watchin’ us? Listenin’ to us? I don’t sleep a lot but I hear ‘em in my sleep, ya know?” He turned to Jane. “You hear ‘em in your sleep?”

Jane knew from past experience that when you indulge the psychosis, the psychosis always wins. But somehow, she had to figure out how to uncover the truth that was buried beneath the insanity. “Yeah. I do. But I don’t know what it means. That’s why we need your help.”

Monroe became very serious. “I
know
you need my help. And I’m here for you.” He turned to Harlan. “
Whatever you need.
You can stay here for as long as you want. I got enough food stored away for the Apocalypse. I’ve always been here for you, man. You know that.” He seemed hypnotized suddenly.

“Monroe?” Jane said in an attempt to jar him out of his trance.

“What?”

“The postcards?”

“Right! We’d send postcards back and forth to each other. And we’d collect ‘em too, wherever we went. Real low tech, considerin’ right? But it was so low tech, nobody caught on. Isn’t that
crazy
?”

“Yeah. Crazy,” Jane offered. “Can I see the postcard?”

He nodded. “It’s this one,” he handed it to Jane.

The card showed a portly farmer standing in his field. His head was bald and he wore denim overalls with a flannel shirt. She showed the postcard to Harlan.

“Damn, Jane,” Harlan murmured. “This photo looks kinda like me right now.”

“Well, of course it does!” Monroe exclaimed. “That’s what he was trying to tell me when he gave it to me.”

Jane leaned forward. “When you say ‘he,’ let’s be clear who we’re talking about.”

Monroe sat back, confused. “
Gabe
! Who the hell else would I be talking about?”

“And he gave you this postcard for what reason?” Jane asked.

Monroe stared at Harlan. “So I would know him when I saw him again.”

Jane’s head spun. “Hang on a second. That’s simply impossible.”

“You never met Gabe, did you?” Monroe quizzed her.

“Not in the flesh, no.”

“Well, if you had, that little postcard is just the tip of the iceberg! Ha!”

Jane glanced down at the farmer’s image on the postcard. It didn’t add up. It was clear to her that, for whatever reason, Harlan was given Gabriel’s heart at the last minute. The entire thing seemed like a spontaneous decision by the surgeon who performed the transplant. But instead of it being an unplanned selection, as she believed, here was a nutcase telling her it was actually providence that stepped in. And the whole thing had seemingly been predicted before it happened.

She leaned forward, handing the postcard back to Monroe. “You realize that Gabe is dead, right?”

Monroe smiled, showing plenty of teeth. “Yeah, right.” He winked toward her in a dramatic manner.

“No, Monroe,” Jane counseled. “He really
is
dead. He was killed nineteen months ago and they transplanted his heart into Harlan’s chest.”

“Wow. That’s fucking beautiful, man.” He looked at Harlan with awe. “And that’s exactly the way he would have done it too.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked. “You’re saying he planned this?”

“With Gabe, nothing is off the table. He may not have planned it ahead of time, but I guarantee you, he had a guiding hand in it after they took him out.”

Jane felt like she was swimming inside a disturbed mind and trying to stay afloat. “How could he have a guiding hand, Monroe? By that point, he was on life support.”

“Oh, life support? That’s even better. His soul was cruisin’ ‘round that hospital looking for the right fit.” He held up the postcard with the farmer. “Looking for the guy he already met.” He leaned forward toward Harlan, speaking in a tone that inferred confidentiality. “You know, I bet he hung out with you afterward to make sure you were okay. That’s the kind of guy Gabe was.”

Harlan nodded. “He did. I thought it was a cop sittin’ by my hospital bed. But it was him, wasn’t it?”

“Ha! A cop! Love it! He’d laugh about that! Oh, yeah, it was Gabe. No two ways about it. It’d be just like him to watch over and protect his new vehicle.”

“His new vehicle?” Jane asked with an incredulous tone.

“Yeah!” Monroe replied, seemingly more relaxed by Jane’s presence. “And what a vehicle he chose!”

“Why do you think he picked me,” Harlan asked, becoming more intrigued.

“It was destiny, brother. You betcha! Gabe talked about destiny with me, among many other things. He used to say, there’s fate, destiny and karma. Fate is the son of destiny. Destiny is written in stone but fate is more forgiving and can alter based on your deeds. Karma is what you earn based on how well you accept your destiny. But in the end, time, God and karma tend to solve everything.”

Jane took it all in. “That’s not exactly the type of conversation that an assassin and his…assistant…typically have.”

Monroe didn’t seem offended by the reference. “Oh, I know that! I’ve worked with a few shooters during my time with the group and Gabe was head and shoulders above all of them.”

“Can I ask you when he got into all this stuff?” Jane inquired.

“I think it was always there inside him. But when he left the group, he started taking it more seriously.” A profound calmness came over him. “He stepped away from this world and spent three years hiking and walking on foot, hitching a ride when he could, working odd jobs, doing seasonal work. But for the first nearly five months, he went into complete isolation. When he came out, I was the first person he looked up. He told me he’d been holed up all winter in a cabin that was off the grid. You have any idea what it takes to do something like that? But he did it and when I heard from him again, he sounded totally different. He said he started eating only raw foods. And I’m not talking vegan shit, man. He was still eating meat, but it was
raw
meat. Even raw eggs!”

Harlan shot a glance toward Jane.

“I thought he’d gone off the deep,” Monroe continued, “but he was saner than anyone out there. Gabe said when he left that cabin, he felt like he was part of the earth again. He said he was purified. He called that shack ‘his desert,’ and he emerged from it a new man. He told me he was ‘rehabilitated.’”