Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (6 page)

38 Weeks

I
am at my desk in my apartment in Nashville. I’ve favored apartments most of my adult life. There is no yard to cut and no responsibility for repairs. You can get one as big or as small as you like, and if you insist on the top floor, preferably a corner unit, it stays pretty quiet. It is also easier to move if all you have to do is break a lease on a furnished apartment. Selling a house full of your shit is something else entirely. All my belongings can be packed into the trunk of my Impala. I do have one storage unit in Atlanta, but even that is on the bare side.

This particular apartment, probably my last, is a nice one-bedroom loft. It has a huge window along the western wall, overlooking the city skyline. I leave my desk and go to the window, watching the sunlight bleed out, expecting full dark to overtake the city at any moment.

I feel Caldwell behind me. I know he’s there before I even turn around. It isn’t just my soldier senses as I like to call them, the knack for knowing when someone has come up behind me because of some imperceptible sound they’ve made or simply their body heat alone. I know Caldwell by the buzz in my head.

The pressure between my ears intensifies as if I’ve stood up too quickly. It isn’t my own pulse I hear thrumming in my ears though. It is him, scurrying around in there.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” I say, without taking my eyes of the beautiful lights ahead of me. The lights make me think of the parking lot carnivals I loved as a kid, the smell of cotton candy and kettle corn and rides that will take you up and sling you around for a ticket. “What took you so fucking long?”

He laughs then, a low chuckle so unlike the laugh I’d heard ten years ago, the first time I’d met him in the bar when Peaches, the barkeep, had made a joke. Or had we laughed about something else? My memory isn’t what it used to be.

“I was nervous,” Caldwell says.

I turn away from the window then, hands still in my pockets, and look at him. He is in a pressed suit. The gray looks like something soft and vulnerable, a rabbit maybe. The tie is blood red. At least some part of him can still tell the truth.

“You were nervous?” I ask and try to ignore the uncomfortable pressure between my temples.

He’s counting the bottle caps I have arranged in two rows on the table. “Yes. You’re thinking of the time I met you at Blackberry Hill. You were all sorts of pissy about being called out as a cop—”

“Federal agent,” I correct.

The corner of his lip tugs up. “A
federal agent
and when you went to leave I laughed, rather nervously, because I wasn’t sure we’d get another chance to talk.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

He looks up then. One slender white finger, no longer the hands of a mechanic or laborer, is pressed to the smooth button top of a bottle cap.

“I know how you remember it,” he says. “And you don’t remember much at all.”

That worries me. What if I get it wrong?—
oh I shouldn’t be thinking about this
.

“I wouldn’t deny a dead man his memoir,” Caldwell says. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Aren’t you a sweetheart,” I say. “What should I worry about?”

“This,” he says and tosses me a folded piece of paper. It’s deeply creased, the folds nearly flat. He’s had it for a while and opened it many times.

The drawing is similar to Jackson’s, with two exceptions. The first, this drawing is sketched out with a felt pen, not with the pencil that Jackson prefers. So the lines are darker, thicker and more chaotic.

The second exception, I stand with the Python at the ready, but instead of having my gun pressed to the side of Caldwell’s head, I’m pointing it at nothing. My barrel is aimed at the great darkness that lies before me, a menacing idea rather than an actual man.

Here, Caldwell stands behind me with both hands wrapped around my throat, his grip suggesting he is just a heartbeat away from snapping my neck.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” he says. “If they were different.”

“Either he flatters you,” I begin, but I can’t finish, not aloud anyway.
Or Jackson didn’t have the heart to show me more.

“Or she didn’t have the heart to
see
more,” Caldwell suggests. My look must be unfriendly because he holds his hands up in mock surrender, palms out as if asking for forgiveness. “Delaney is a show off, though, yes. You’re quite right about that.”

“You’re quite right about that,” I mock. “Where did you learn to talk?”

“Why?” he asks, amusement curling his words. “Thinking of disappearing yourself? Reinventing your own image? I know a few people who are skilled at that kind of thing.”

“I don’t run away,” I say.
Not like you.

If he hears this, and why wouldn’t he, he makes no response. Instead, he picks up the bottle cap he’s been pressing down into the tabletop and tosses it into the air. On the next breath he catches it. “I thought you’d quit drinking so much,” he says.

“I thought you’d quit murdering people,” I say.

“Old habits die hard.” Caldwell smiles then. “Like old men.”

“Not all of us can age as well as you do,” I say, alluding to the fact that he will not age as long as he keeps dying. His NRD, his ability to die and wake up with fresh cells and a smooth face has kept him young. And if he keeps dying, it will be his mind that goes before his body.

He laughs and I find myself comparing the man I met ten years ago to the one I see now. He’s gotten his teeth fixed and a bit more cosmetic surgery to hide the scars along his jaw better. He quit dyeing his hair and let it grow in natural. Now it’s the same color as Jesse’s again, and he has her freckles too.

“How is my daughter?” he asks. “You spend more time with her than I do.”

“If she is your daughter, I’m the Holy Ghost.”

“That isn’t a very nice thing to say.” His eyes darken and I reach my hand behind my back and put it on the Glock resting there.

“She quit being your daughter when you tried to kill her,” I say.

I raise my gun to put a bullet in his brain. To hell with waiting for weeks and weeks for the inevitable. We can do this now and we can do it my way.

But Caldwell disappears. One moment he is in front of me, stepping forward. The next moment I feel two cold hands grabbing me. One squeezes the back of my neck, the other locks my arm into place so I can’t shoot.

“Is this dress rehearsal?” Caldwell says, laughing into my ear. He presses himself against me and I consider my options. My cheek burns and I realize he’s hit me when reaching around. Not a direct hit, but it will bruise.

“Relax, old man,” he says. “I didn’t come here to kill you. If I’d wanted to kill you I would have done it a long time ago, don’t you think? I’ve had enough opportunities.”

“Why haven’t you?” I demand an answer. My anger is real, raw and surfacing fast.

“I am what I am because of you,” he says, squeezing me tighter.

The pressure in my brain intensifies and I wonder if I will hemorrhage. Maybe he will weaken some vessel and I’ll have an aneurysm here and now.

“You led me to Henry Chaplain,” he says. “You showed me the path to my true destiny and all the greatness for which I was intended, and Jesse too.”

My blood turns cold at the mention of her name.

“Every day you make her more and more into what she is meant to be. I can feel it. You’ll make her ready for me. I wouldn’t dare disrupt that.”

I break his grip and whirl, wide and angry. I shove the Glock under his chin and it raises to accommodate the barrel. But before I can pull the trigger, all the resistance goes out. I stumble forward, almost hitting the dark glass, the bright city beyond.

Caldwell is gone.

37 Weeks

“
O
h my God,” Jesse wails. “Who
does
that?”

She stands over the computer I’ve dismantled in her garage. We’ve moved her car out to the driveway and closed the door behind us so that no one can see me. The bright fluorescents make the computer components shine.

“I want you to put it back together,” I say. I offer her the small screwdriver. “Just do what I told you.”

She throws her hands up. “And what if he has a Mac. This won’t work on a Macbook.” She flicks her ponytail over her shoulder and crosses her arms. She has a flair for the dramatic that rivals any drag queen.

“He has a Compaq,” I say and offer her the screwdriver again. I’m referring to Mr. Lovett, an upcoming target. Jesse will have to go into his home and steal his hard drive for me. I could do it, but I want to teach her something while I still can.

“You put it in all these little pieces,” she whines, but she takes the tool from me. “Why is it in so many pieces? And they are so tiny, look at this.” She shakes a chip at me.

“Hurry,” I tell her. “We still need to work on your locks.”

She glances at the corner of the garage by the door leading into the house. A cardboard box brims with locks, old and new. I told her lockpicking and computer knowledge were essential to life as a secret agent, and it is mostly true. Though technology has changed most of this.

“Can we do the locks first and then the computer?”

I grunt. “Nice try.” I know she likes the lock picking. TV has made it just cool enough for her to be interested. But if I let her start there, she’ll never do the computer.

“And why do I even have to dismantle the computer?” she complains. “Can’t I just take a USB and steal all his files or something?”

“What if you can’t turn it on?” I ask.

“I’m not technologically challenged.”

“I’m not saying you are, but can you imagine
another
reason why the computer might not come on for you?” I press.

That shuts her up and she gives me a wary look, like she is expecting me to call her out on something. I could. This would be the perfect time to do so. I could say,
I know you have problems with electricity. You bust wires and blow fuses. Just like Caldwell, who can step from one place to another far, far away. You have this gift and you’ll have to learn how to work with it, or around it.

But Jesse hasn’t officially told me what is going on with her, and I’ve heard her lie about the number of lightbulbs she’s replaced and blame static electricity far too often. She doesn’t want to talk about it with me, and I respect that.

“Agents don’t whine. Do your computer,” I say and lean against the garage wall, waiting.

“I’m not a whiner. I am, like, the toughest person you know.”

“I’ll tell Jackson you said that,” I begin. “If you don’t shut up and get to work. I’m not going to stand here all damn day.”

“OK, the second toughest,” she corrects.

I shove an overturned milk crate toward her so she can sit in front of the dismantled computer. She plops down onto the seat and starts working.

I watch her face furrow in concentration and a weight settles against my chest. I’m trying to teach her something, sure, but I know this is as much for me as it is for her.

I can’t get over Caldwell’s words.
You’re making her ready for me.

I hope not. But if I am, how? By teaching her? What was the alternative? Let her die unprepared?

She snaps each of the components onto the board, one at a time. She’s figuring it out for herself, without my help. Good. It’s better this way.

Monday, March 24, 2003

I
ran dummy Rachel’s fingerprints through the system and it came back for a Heidi Tripe, arrested two years ago for a drunk and disorderly, and six months after that for possession for less than an eighth of marijuana. The second case was dropped.

As she sat in the plastic chair opposite mine, I explained the identity theft charges I was laying against her. I had to talk a great deal about fines and jail time before she opened her mouth.

“Henry Chaplain,” she finally told me and pressed her shaking hands to her eyes. When her palms came away dark with smeared makeup, she rubbed them together. “His name isn’t Jason, it’s Henry Chaplain. He has a place over near Beckett Park, on Page Street.”

“Write the address down,” I told her. She hesitated, rolling the pen between her fingers.

“He’s going to know it was me.”

“How would he know?”

“He knows shit. He knows everything.”

“You’re saying this guy is telepathic?”

Her eyes doubled in size. “Maybe. He has a way of getting into your head, you know?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Now write down the address or I won’t be able to say you were fully cooperative.”

She began to cry again but at least she picked up the pen and did what I said, which is good, because Charlie walked by the room and saw me with her. I was going to have to get the hell out of this office if I wanted to get any work done. I couldn’t do shit with Charlie hovering.

“So let me just be clear. You were applying to jobs as Rachel because Chaplain told you to throw us off her trail. He said he didn’t want anyone looking for her. Did I get that right?”

She sniffed and nodded.

“Good. Let’s get you over to County,” I said.

Mild reluctance became complete resistance. The girl screamed and refused. When I tried to pull her up from her seat, she scooted back, wrenched her arm away and threw the chair. The commotion drew others. Hunter Connolly and Tom Trainer helped me get her out of the room, cuffed, and into the back of the car.

“You’ve killed me,” she said. She screamed so hard her face was red with the effort. “You’ve
killed
me.”

Charlie appeared beside us outside on the curb. Before I could thank and dismiss Hunter and Tom, Charlie barked his own orders.

“Trainer, get her down to County,” Charlie said.

Heidi’s face was redder than a tomato as she screamed and kicked the seat in front of her. Trainer gave me a reluctant look but I nodded and handed him the keys. “I’ll call ahead and tell them you’re coming.”

Hunter went back inside and Tom got behind the wheel of my car. As he put the Impala in reverse, Charlie turned to me and said, “Don’t you have something else to do?”

I did. As soon as Trainer got back, I packed up my shit and went to the bar. The atmosphere and the company would be better if nothing else.

When I walked into Blackberry Hill, Peaches, a heavy-set old guy who owns the place waved heartily, his great arm flopping like a beached fish. Peaches made me think of a biker Santa. His white hair was pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck and matched his great white beard. On his left bicep was a picture of his dog, Roxanne, a Pit-Rottweiler mix.

“B. You here to practice for the tourney?” he called out.

“Not today,” I said. “It’s a work date.”

Peaches frowned. “Where’s the darn fun in that?”

I shrugged. “The house pint will have to be fun enough.”

Peaches pulled a frosted mug out of the fridge and poured a Blackberry Hill draft with one tug of the silver tap. He used a ruler to slide the foam off before refilling it.

A boy band came on the jukebox and I snorted foam out my nose. Peaches was an AC/DC, Alice Cooper, and Bon Jovi man all the way.

Pinching the bridge of my nose I said, “What the hell is that?” I nodded toward the jukebox.

“It turns out I’ve discovered why the replacement jukebox was such a good deal.”

“You didn’t request this song?” I asked.

“God no, the first time it happened, I pulled all the CDs out and reset it. There isn’t a Backstreet Boys tape in that thing. But every once in a while, it will play one of their songs anyway.”

“That’s some scary shit,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

I thanked him for the beer and settled into the darkest corner of the room, a circular booth with lots of tabletop space and a view of the door, bar, pool tables, and dartboards, all reflected in the large mirrors running from one end to the other.

The crowd was thin this early in the afternoon, and I was fine with that. I hoped it would be a slow week night. Not dead, not for Peaches’ sake anyway, but thin enough that I wouldn’t have to pack up my notes until I was good and ready to do so.

I pored over the photographs I had. Eric Sullivan’s, circa 1995, courtesy of the DMV. Maisie Michaelson’s, courtesy of her mother, and Rachel Wright’s charming mug shot for the indecent exposure charge. And a fourth photo, also from the DMV—Henry Chaplain. He had a smarmy pirate look about him, or it could’ve been the eye patch, more than the olive skin, dark curls, and sharp cheekbones. I wrote notes for each case, asking myself questions to start me down one path or another.

Maisie: What were the circumstances of her adoption? Where are her birth parents? Were there any family members who were not happy with the adoption? I’d be looking for a father of course, a man with blond hair like Maisie’s.

Rachel: What’s the connection to Henry Chaplain? Is Henry Chaplain protecting Rachel by using his influence to throw someone off her trail? Do they have a bigger crime planned and Holly was simply misdirection?

Chaplain’s record was clean with no priors. If I wanted to know who he was and what he was about, I’d have to use other sources. I had an address, but I couldn’t walk up and knock on the door. Nothing shuts mouths faster than showing a badge. Even perfectly innocent people clam up when you do that. But at least I had a good suspicion that the way to find Rachel was through Chaplain.

I put Eric’s picture beside Maisie’s and there was just something about it. Those faces were speaking to me, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. I hated that. I hated knowing that I saw something but just didn’t make the connection.

I asked Peaches for another house pint in a fresh frosted mug and he obliged. I was halfway through my third pint before my head cleared enough, the throbbing subsiding and my unsteady hands growing still. I turned my full attention to Sullivan.

Charlie wanted him caught, but why? He wasn’t a criminal. There were no entries for him in the system. The only entry I found belonged to the FBRD database. It was only a standard entry for those with known NRD. I had his name, basic public information and death day, some of it courtesy of Memphis. But I doubted any of this would help.

I had two choices.

I could request the files from Jerome, or I could follow the money. When Eric got out, he would’ve needed money. His assets would’ve gone to his wife and kid, and since it didn’t seem like he filed the paperwork to get them back, he must’ve gone a different route. So who did he get money from? And where did he go with it? Because a man has got to eat.

I lifted the pint and drained the last of it. Before I drank the last drop, I saw a dark shape in the bottom of the glass grow larger. Someone was approaching me. I tuned my ears to the sounds of the bar. I listened for tension, anger, threats. Nothing. I still drew my gun under the table, resting the barrel against my leg.

“Hey man,” a voice said.

I lowered the glass enough to see the man speaking, but damned if I was going to let go of the mug. A gun in one hand and a thick glass mug in the other was better than no weapon at all.

“Yeah?”

“Peaches said you won the dart tourney. That true?”

“Yep,” I said. I measured the kid. 5’11. Thick, calloused hands. Scruffy face and blue eyes. He had the look of a laborer in his jean jacket. Factory work or construction maybe. Either was possible around St. Louis, or maybe he was from Illinois, across the river where rents were cheaper. Plenty of the blue collar boys came over to drink in the bars, though they couldn’t afford a room here.

“You want to play?” he asked.

I leaned forward so that the front of my jacket would hang open enough to make the movement casual and slipped the gun back into place.

“Sure, kid,” I said. I could’ve been a bastard and refused him, but why? I needed to step away from my notes anyway and give the facts a minute to settle in my mind. The words were blurring on the page, and not because I’d had three pints.

“But let’s keep it simple. I’m working,” I told him. “How about three throws and the one who hits the bullseye most, wins.”

He grinned as if he’d already won. “All right.”

First, I repacked the folder and handed it to Peaches for safe keeping.

“Don’t look at these, or lose them, or I’ll have to kill you,” I warned him. I winked for show, but his laugh was tight. Good ol’ Peaches, he thought I’d actually put a bullet in him. Good. Not that I liked to threaten my friends, but a man was only as good as the threat he could make.

I kept my eyes on him until he tucked the folder under the register and then I turned to the kid. He had six darts in his hand and gave me three, the ones with red tips on their little green flights.

I let him go first. He was pretty good. He hit the innermost circle each time, two tips touching the outside edge of the red bullseye and one dead center. With all three stuck, he grinned triumphantly and turned to me. His friends clapped. Then he went to remove his darts.

“Leave them,” I said.

“They’re all on the bullseye. It’ll mess up your shot, man.”

“I’ve got plenty of room,” I insisted.

Peaches laughed behind me. “Go easy on them, B. It’s too early in the week to be breaking hearts. We’re still getting over Monday. ”

“I’d like to see you do better,” the kid scoffed. Shit talk. The biggest difference between young pups and old dogs. At some point, you get your ass handed to you enough that you quit talking shit and simply hand it out if you can.

“Would you?” I asked and smiled at him. “All right.”

I threw the first dart and bullseye. I threw the second and thumped against the board right beside the first, knocking it to the right a little so the little flights veered in opposite directions, two of his darts fell off the board.

“Don’t hold back, Danger,” Peaches said, chuckling.

I winked at the kid and closed my eyes. I visualized the bullseye in my mind and where I wanted the dart to land. Then I exhaled and threw it. I opened my eyes after I heard the thump against the board. My three crowded his dart in the center. It looked threatened and surrounded.

“Damn. I don’t believe it,” the kid said.

I slapped him on the back. “Practice kid. It’s just practice.”

“When the hell did you have that much time for practice?” he asked. “Prison?”

“You think they give you sharp objects in prison?” I motioned for two more pints. Peaches nodded and pulled out the mugs. “How did you learn?”

“Pool and darts is a good way to earn cash. I just went around the bars and played the best, learning what I could where I could. You ain’t gotta pay taxes on what you get.”

“A man has got to eat,” I said and put a pint in his hands. “On me.”

Cash under the table
. He was right. There were plenty of ways for a man to make cash under the table if he was desperate enough. If Sullivan didn’t want anyone’s help, he didn’t have to take it.

It wouldn’t make sense to try and trace the money. I’d have to start with Jerome. Though the facility was closed, hopefully, there was still enough there to point me in a direction.

I’d just handed the darts to one of the boy’s friends when I got the distinct feeling I was being watched.

A black woman sitting alone at a table across the room wasn’t blinking. She had a pint in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face. It wasn’t friendly. Certainly not the kind of look a woman gives you across the bar, if you’re lucky.

I held her gaze for a moment. I wasn’t trying to intimidate her. I was just wary. She looked damn capable of trouble if that was her prerogative. So I let her look, but I had no intention of letting her come closer.

The blue collar boy said something and I turned to respond. When I looked back, the woman with the close cropped hair was gone. Her pint, still full, rested on the vacated table.